the effectiveness of extensive reading on elementary students’ vocabulary development at north america international school in viet nam

On the other hand, reading is described as a receptive skill which means vocabulary learning is likely to be happened if students read intensively in class and extensively at home; thus,

BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC MỞ THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH

-ĐẶNG HOÀNG BÍCH TRÂM

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF EXTENSIVE READING ON ELEMENTARY STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT AT NORTH - AMERICA

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL IN VIET NAM

LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ GIẢNG DẠY TIẾNG ANH

BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC MỞ THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH

-THE EFFECTIVENESS OF EXTENSIVE READING ON ELEMENTARY STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT AT NORTH - AMERICA

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL IN VIET NAM

Chuyên ngành : Lý luận và giảng dạy tiếng Anh

Mã số chuyên ngành : 60140111

LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ GIÀNG DẠY BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH

Người hướng dẫn khoa học

Dr Huỳnh Công Minh Hùng

in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree

No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of the thesis

I further declare that I have not submitted this thesis at any other institution for the award of any degree or diploma

Ho Chi Minh, 2019

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ACKNOLEDGEMENT

Firstly, I would like to show my gratitude toward Dr Huynh Cong Minh Hung, my thesis advisor, for the great advice and valuable guidance he offered in the process of completing this thesis

Secondly, I want to thank the manager of North America International School at Tan Phu Branch - for the support and assistance during the preparation of this study The second person

I really want to appreciate is Mr Waring Rob for his advices and support

Thirdly, from the bottom of my heart I would like to appreciate my students for their enthusiastic cooperation in the study

Finally, I owe special thanks to my parents, my younger brother who are always by my side

to encourage and take care of me Without their support, I could have never finished the biggest challenge in my life – the thesis

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ABSTRACT

How to develop English learners’ vocabulary has always held educators and teachers’ attention Still, vocabulary teaching is deployed in a traditional way – explicit teaching, many teachers in Viet Nam are taken into account other approaches to help the students acquire the vocabulary implicitly On the other hand, reading is described as a receptive skill which means vocabulary learning is likely to be happened if students read intensively in class and extensively at home; thus, this insight leads to the idea of employing Extensive Reading in teaching and discover its benefits on students’ vocabulary development This study is a quasi – experimental study which was conducted to find out the effectiveness of Extensive reading

on students’ vocabulary development The participants were 60 teenage students at North America International School who were divided into 2 groups One was the experimental group (n = 30) and the other was the control group (n = 30) The study was carried out by experimenting the population with reading extensively graded readers within 3 months A pre

- test, while and post - test were designed so as to evaluate the vocabulary development of the students The findings reveal that the experimental group (EG) outperformed the control group in the vocabulary test results Besides, the experimental group’s vocabulary size was found to be increased more than the control group (CG) The results also give the teachers at North - America International School a new insight in teaching English, especially in Vocabulary

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP 3

ACKNOLEDGEMENT 4

ABSTRACT 5

TABLE OF CONTENTS 6

LIST OF TABLES 10

LIST OF FIGURES 13

LIST OF CHARTS 14

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 15

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 16

1.1 Background of the study 16

1.2 Statement of purposes 16

1.3 Research Question 17

1.4 Significance of the study 17

1.5 Research gaps 18

1.6 Rationale for the study 18

1.7 Scope of the study and organization 19

1.8 Organization of the study 20

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 21

2.1 Reading 21

2.1.1 The roles of reading in L2 learning 22

2.2 Extensive Reading 22

2.2.1 Principle of Extensive Reading 24

2.2.2 Extensive Reading Benefits and its benefits into Vocabulary 26

2.2.3 Intensive reading versus Extensive reading 27

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2.2.4 What is Vocabulary 29

2.2.5 How the Vocabulary is acquired 30

2.2.6 What is vocabulary development? 32

2.2.7 What vocabulary need to be learnt 33

2.3 Theoretical Framework 34

2.3.1 Comprehensible Input Hypothesis 34

2.4 Graded Readers 39

2.5 Previous Studies 40

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY 47

3.1 Research site 47

3.1.1 Teaching programs and textbooks 48

3.1.2 The library 50

3.2 Research design 50

3.2.1 Settings 51

3.3 Pilot study 56

3.3.1 Pilot study findings 56

3.4 14th 1000 words Vocabulary Level Test 57

3.4.1 How to interpret the 14th words vocabulary level test result 58

3.4.2 Validating the 14th words vocabulary level test 59

3.4.3 The reliability of the tests 60

3.5 Procedures 60

3.6 Data collection 63

3.6.1 Instruments to collect data 63

3.6.2 Data Analysis 64

Chapter 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 65

4.1 Findings 65

4.1.1 Reading diary 65

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4.1.2 Book report 68

4.1.3 Pre – test and Post – test analysis of NIS test 69

4.1.4 Comparing the test results of the EG on the 14th words vocabulary level test 74

4.1.5 Comparing the test results of the CG on the 14th words vocabulary test 78

4.1.6 Comparison between the post-test of the first, second and third 1000 words vocabulary level test of the EG and CG 81

4.2 Discussion of findings 82

4.3 Interpretation of the findings 82

Chapter 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION 85

5.1 Conclusion 85

5.2 Limitations 86

5.3 Delimitations 86

5.4 Implications 87

5.5 Recommendations 87

References 88

APPENDICES 92

Appendix 1: Reading diary 92

Appendix 2: Book report 93

Appendix 3: The course syllabus 94

Appendix 4: Contents of the units of the course outline 101

Appendix 5: Test of the previous course at NIS test of the EG 104

Appendix 6: The final test of the school on the EG 105

Appendix 7: The GRs titles 107

Appendix 8: The 14th 1000 words level test 109

Appendix 9: The school final test 134

9 Appendix 10: Sample of reading diary and book reports 141

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Characteristics of Extensive Reading and Intensive Reading 28

Table 2 Vocabulary size and text coverage in the Brown corpus 34

Table 3 The previous study on the benefits of ER 40

Table 4 NIS class timetable 48

Table 5 The gender of participants in the EG and the CG 51

Table 6 The age of the participants 52

Table 7 Years of learning English 52

Table 8 The number of words at each level of Macmillan Readers 54

Table 9 Reliability Statistics 60

Table 10 The core elements of the study 62

Table 11 The reading hours (RH) within 12 weeks 67

Table 12 The number of words the EG write in their book report of the first and the final week 69

Table 13 The pre-test of CG and EG on NIS test 69

Table 14 The pre and post vocabulary mean score of NIS test of the EG 70

Table 15 The pre and post-vocabulary score of NIS test of the EG 70

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Table 16 Comparing the mean score of Post-test of the CG and EG 71

Table 17 Comparison the mean scores of the pre – test and post – test of the CG and EG on NIS final test 71

Table 18 Pre and Post-test of the EG and CG on the final test of the school 73

Table 19 The comparison on the mean score of the post-test of the EG and the CG on the final test of the school 74

Table 20 Results of t- test for pre and post – test of the first 1000 words vocabulary 74

Table 21 The mean score of the pre and post – test of the first 1000 words vocabulary of the EG 75

Table 22 Results of t- test for pre and post-test of the second 1000 words vocabulary of the EG 75

Table 23 Pre and Post-test of the second 1000 words vocabulary level test of the EG 76

Table 24 Results of t- test for pre and post-test of the third 1000 words vocabulary of the EG 77

Table 25 Pre and post-test of the third 1000 words vocabulary level test of the EG 77

Table 26 Pre and post-test of the first 1000 words vocabulary level test of the CG 78

Table 27 Pre and post-test of the first 1000 words vocabulary level test of the CG 78

Table 28 The comparison between the pre and post-test of the second 1000 words vocabulary level test of the CG 79

Table 29 Pre and post-test of the second 1000 words vocabulary level test of the CG 79

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Table 30 The comparison between the pre and post-test of the second 1000 words vocabulary level test of the CG 80

Table 31 Pre and Post-test of the third 1000 words vocabulary level test of the CG 80

Table 32 The descriptive data of the post-test of the first, second and third 1000 words vocabulary level test of the EG and CG 81

Table 33 The GR titles of the experiment 107

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LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 1 The reading hours of the EG within 12 weeks 66

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Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

English is more and more popular all over the world In recent years, the demand of learning English has increased Many teaching programs and campaigns have been created so

as to help the learners achieve the second language (L2) better Still, a lot of money has been invested in order to upgrade English proficiency of the county but most of the programs have been failed Apparently, there is always a wish to become fluent in speaking English and use the language effectively because of the needs for their jobs, their further learning or travelling Moreover, after learning English 12 years, many Vietnamese students cannot use the language

to communicate effectively and fluently which a is big obstacle not only for themselves but also for the country Due to this fact, how to teach the language effectively should be taken into consideration As a result, there is a need for the finding some new teaching and learning approaches to boost L2 learning Luckily, a teaching approach has lately been introduced which could bring the learners with such many benefits in L2 learning that is Extensive Reading (ER) Bamford (2005) cited that ER could be useful for language learners regarding

to many aspects such as developing reading ability, increasing motivation and positive attitude

in learning the language, improving reading fluency and writing, and gaining students’ vocabulary

1.2 Statement of purposes

Learners need a wide range of vocabulary to perform all four language skills As Hunt and Beglar (2005) show that there is not enough amount of oral or written input for the learners in and outside the classroom Thus, Extensive Reading is described to fulfill these needs Generally, many countries have encouraged students to read extensively or even many ER programs or campaigns are implemented so as to improve learners’ English proficiency However, these studies are still new to the Vietnamese teachers in Vietnam, especially the teachers in North - America International School (NIS) Besides, conventionally, the only way which the Vietnamese teachers normally employ to approach the reading texts in teaching reading is intensive reading but reading intensively seems not to bring the students utmost

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learning improvement and it cannot gain students’ motivation in learning or reading target language Lastly, after teaching the class in some weeks, the researcher realizes that the students lack of vocabulary and their reading skills are not good enough compare to the students at the same level This was realized when the students failed to perform in the Vocabulary Levels Test and their score were lower than 3000 words, as a result; there is a need to enhance their Vocabulary should be implemented

The proposed study contributes to the research on the effectiveness of ER in developing students’ vocabulary size The students’ vocabulary at NIS need to be widen, so the objective

of this study is to provide the learners with more readings, Graded Readers (GR) and then to examine the improvement of elementary students’ Vocabulary size through testing the learners’ memorization of the Vocabulary in the Graded Readers by employing The Vocabulary Levels Tests for pre and post - test In order to achieve this objective, the students need to know the form, meaning and use of the vocabulary which is represented through the tests and writings Furthermore, the study could provide the teachers some fundamental factors

of conducting an ER program

1.3 Research Question

To what extent, does Extensive Reading affect elementary students’ vocabulary development at North – America International School?

1.4 Significance of the study

Still, Extensive reading is completely new to the teachers at NIS Not many teachers at North - America International School have a deep understanding in extensive reading, its benefits and how it works As a result, it can be seen that teacher at NIS have not made use of

ER in teaching English In fact, the demand for more and more language input is needed to be met However, students at the center only receive the language input from the teachers and the language in the textbook which is apparently not enough Therefore, firstly, the study could bring the students at NIS a chance to approach the ER in the course Also, Ruddel (cited in Dakun, 2007) claims that there are not many studies which could answer the questions of how

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learner might learn words, the nature of vocabulary learning and strategies for learning vocabulary in reading Therefore, secondly, the study could address these issues Moreover, Dakun (2007) stated that little has been known about the vocabulary strategies and development through reading Thirdly, the study could inform the readers, especially the English teachers at NIS in particular and English teachers in Viet Nam in general some insights into the benefits of extensive reading

1.5 Research gaps

In fact, it is rare to encounter the experiments that investigate the effectiveness of ER on students’ vocabulary development only used Graded Readers in Viet Nam Due to this fact, this study is carried out with graded readers as a mere treatment within three months Moreover, the other studies were conducted on common settings which are mostly universities, primary or high school but not at an English center Therefore, this study is at the students at an English center that is – North - America International School Additionally, there is a need for employing ER together with IR so as to maximize the encountering of the new words because of lacking chances to meet the words (Thornbury, 2002) Furthermore, there is a call for other types of assessments for the students’ vocabulary progress instead of only the traditional tests at school or the other vocabulary test originated by Cambridge University Press As a consequence, the study purpose is to employ both the test of the school and the 14th 1000 words vocabulary level test as an evaluation method Moreover, most of the study are reported to carry on the Primary students, adult students, university students except the teenage students Especially, there has not been any study on the effectiveness of ER on Teenage learners’ vocabulary development in Viet Nam in general and in an English center in specific

1.6 Rationale for the study

Practically, English is considered as the most popular language in the world Also, English

is also a compulsory subject at all schools in many countries and especially in Viet Nam However, after learning English for twelve years, many students are still not able to use the language effectively This leads to more and more students are sent to English Center to have

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extra English class At the schools in Viet Nam, teachers get used to employing Grammar Translation Methods and regarding to reading, intensive reading is widely used because the typical format for all the final tests of the school focus on the grammar points and reading comprehension As a result, learning English seems to concentrate on mastering grammar but using it fluently Thus, there is a need to implement a better teaching method which could fulfill the students’ need

In order to accomplish the wish to use English effectively, learners need to be immersed

in the language environment and one of the useful ways to provide the students with the language is Extensive Reading Extensive Reading is claimed to bring the students enough the language input for their learning process and it is implemented in many countries in the world, but it is still new to Vietnamese teachers Besides, the amount of English used in class is also not consistent with each class to provide the learners with the sufficient input for their language learning Therefore, it is essential to satisfy the learners’ needs for receiving sufficient vocabulary in class and outside the classroom (Yu-jing, 2010) through ER At the center, the vocabulary and reading ability were not good enough compare to the current level because the teachers at the center do not know how to provide their learners with more language input Therefore, hopefully, the study on the benefit of Extensive Reading could give the students more opportunities to absorb to the language input Additionally, the study on the effectiveness

of Extensive Reading on the vocabulary is still rare in Viet Nam Therefore, the study hopes

to find out whether extensive reading is beneficial to students’ vocabulary size and give the teachers with the insights into the extensive reading

1.7 Scope of the study and organization

The scope of this study is defined as an investigation into the effectiveness of extensive reading at North – America International School Therefore, the study was employed limitedly

at North – America International school context and in term of reading aspect The subjects of the study were 60 teenage Vietnamese students who were at elementary level They were in TEEN 7 and their age were ranging from 12 to 15 years old In order to investigate the improvement of the participants of the providing them the treatment, students were required

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to test their vocabulary size by the 14th 1000 words vocabulary level Moreover, the ER benefits were also figured out by the reading diaries and book reports The research findings are likely to be interpret in different contexts but in this study, the findings are drawn in Chapter 4 and 5

1.8 Organization of the study

The study consists of five chapters as follow:

Chapter 1 presents the introduction of the study such parts as the background of the study, the purposes of the study, the research question, the significance of the study, the research gaps, the rationale of the study and the scope of the study

Chapter 2 illustrates the literature review of the study which includes some of the elements such as reading, extensive reading, vocabulary, theoretical framework of the study, Graded Readers, Previous Studies

Chapter 3 demonstrates the methodology of the study This chapter deals with the research site, research design, pilot study, the description about the 14th 1000 words vocabulary test, the procedure of the study and how the data was collected

Chapter 4 analyzes the data and draws out the result of the findings and the discussion

of the findings

Chapter 5 points out some conclusions and implications of the study which comprises the conclusions, limitations, delimitations, implications and recommendations of the study

is the ability to recognize the words, the sentences structures and together with cognitive skills

in order to interpret the meaning of the reading texts By the same token, Horwitz (2013) emphasizes that reading is a tool for learning L2 because students can learn vocabulary, content or phonology while reading a text On the other hand, Krashen (2015) presents reading

as a source for providing the students with comprehensible input It is stated that if the readers want to read and comprehend the reading texts effectively and precisely, he needs to employ the reading processes both bottom up and top down process Concerning to the receptive aspect, Carrell and Grabe (2010) reach a consensus with Leaver, Ehrman, and Shekhtman (2005) by presenting that reading is a receptive skill because readers are likely to receive the input from the written works and they have high chances to read the texts many times to interpret the text Regarding to the active role of reading, Grabe and Fredricka, (2014) are in line with Leaver, Ehrman, and Shekhtman (2005) by describing that, reading is an active role because reading is the human’s active shifting of how we use our cognitive processes to fit in with knowledge resource In details, readers need to decode from the words, the sentences to the whole paragraph to comprehend the texts and interpret its social consciousness

Patel (2008) introduces two approaches of L2 reading which are Intensive reading and Extensive Reading While Intensive reading (IR) is concerned as read a short reading texts to understand the content and learn the grammar structures or vocabulary (Grabe & Fredricka, 2014), ER is likely to be differentiated by focusing only on understanding reading texts and other aspects are implicitly acquired Similarly, Patel (2008) classifies reading into ER and IR but he considers ER is silent reading and IR is aloud reading The objectives of reading are also described such as skimming for the main ideas when we want to learn from a manual,

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scanning for the specific information we want to find on the internet or website, reading for details to understand the minor information or reading for pleasure, as stated in (Carrell & Grabe, 2010)

2.1.1 The roles of reading in L2 learning

Horwitz (2013) points out that reading is the basic factor to develop fully their language competence Reading and listening skills are the preliminary skills that lead to receive the language but reading skill is considered more helpful for language learners than listening skills because the reading materials can be easier accessed (Horwitz E K., 2013) Indeed, Patel (2008) is in line with Horwitz (2013) in emphasizing the significant role of reading in L2 learning because it is the most common way expose the students to language in the learning process and have them explore the meaning from the texts Whereas Patel (2008) describes that readers are able to update their knowledge and be beneficial to long term success in learning, Horwitz (2013) explains that by reading, students are capable of approaching the L2 cultures and experience a wide range of conversational situations besides their real speaking experiences By the same token, Patel (2008) asserts that reading is the critical activity in widening human’s mind and consolidating the knowledge whereas Horwitz (2013) affirms the role of reading as a tool for vocabulary and grammar development Additionally, Horwitz (2013) consensuses among Jabobs (2014) that reading is a means of absorbing the language input, especially Comprehensible input and a representative reading type which totally gives the learners comprehensible input is Extensive Reading

2.2 Extensive Reading

Extensive Reading is described as “reading books after book” (Palmer, 1968) Horwitz (2013) also states that ER means read a long text in order to obtain the general content of the text Nwabudike and Anaso (2013) adds that ER aims to read for pleasure rather than serve any specific learning purpose Also, it is introduced that ER is an implicit way of learning the language (Lee and Mallinder, 2017) ER provides the learners with a large number of books which are enjoyable for the students to comprehend To explain, the chosen materials are put the readers at ease in reading understandably and comfortably Moreover, Harmer (2015)

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holds that ER usually takes place outside the classroom as a means for practicing reading beside attending the class He adds that the more students enjoy the reading, the more they acquire L2 Krashen (2015) reveals that ER could supply the learners with comprehensible input – which is understandable language through reading large amounts of reading texts Specifically, these reading materials are normally at the students’ current language level and presented vividly with the interesting and attractive topics Nation (2009) agreed with this view by pointing out that graded readers – a representative of ER is strongly affect students’ vocabulary acquisition because of the simplified language the readers gain in reading texts

Horwitz (2013) is in line with Huffman (2014) by contributing that ER involves in reading

a lot of reading materials for pleasure Bamford (1998) points out that in ER, students can choose the wide range of reading materials that they find interesting Due to this characteristic, readers are more engaged in reading for a long time It is stated that by reading various texts, learners maintain their motivation and enjoyment in reading within a long period of time; as a result, their anxiety is decreased while their interest in reading is increased This element is agreed by Bamford (2005) with the affirmation that ER is an engaging reading approach which could attract learners with interesting and meaningful reading texts and reading for enjoyment Along with the amusement of the texts, ER is beneficial to language learning in implicitly enhancing learners’ language skills in terms of reading ability, vocabulary, reading rate, spelling, and fluency development

Horwitz (2013) identifies that the dominant features of ER is to get the content of the long texts - reading for gist For obtaining this objective, readers are likely to skim for the main ideas of the reading materials without caring of the other language aspects Besides, ER is confirmed to develop learners reading ability, fluency and speed which boosts the learners to process the language more automatically and naturally In addition, Horwitz (2013) identifies that ER guides the students to get the content of the long texts which are mainly called reading for gists because readers mostly skimming for the main ideas of the reading materials

In addition, ER creates a sense of how language structure should be It is good for the learners because this sense for the language seems to help the learners in developing a good

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mind for learning the second language As can be seen in the textbooks that most of the reading

is well written and limited to a certain circumstance in order to meet the lesson purpose Consequently, learners cannot have chances to meet all or various language patterns as in the materials in ER (Renandya, Rajan, & Jacobs, 2009)

According to Extensive Reading foundation, ER could be beneficial to language learners

in many ways such as having students to meet the words more frequently in a natural context and gradually, they will extend their reading from the books to the other type of materials While reading more and more materials, they take no notice to every word to grasp the content

of the sentences but the more they read, the more words they encounter which leads to the word repetition and memorization Day by day, students become get used to reading a second language texts This process is likely to move from on book a week to two books a week or even a second language magazines or newspapers Moreover, ER is indicated to build the vocabulary for the learners because they have many chances to read and meet a large number

of words constantly Also, the words occurrence happens repeatedly which render the learners

to become mastering L2 vocabulary and grammar

Extensive Reading Foundation also confirms that ER seems to provide the learners with the reading materials fit in with their reading ability and build up the reading habit ER is supposed to form a good reading habit for the learners because they are given a choice to read what they like and reading becomes more and more interesting than they have ever experienced before Gradually, students get accustomed to reading; as a result; they could develop their reading habit with more diverse and higher-level book Grabe and Fredricka (2014) point out that one way to bring the learners opportunities to read various texts is from

ER which Vietnamese students do not have chances to run into because almost L2 input they

go through is from the textbooks

2.2.1 Principle of Extensive Reading

Bamford (2005) also adds some distinctive features of ER that readers will

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 read as much as possible

 read for gist

 have free choices of reading materials,

 read at their own pace

 choose the materials that are lower than students’ current level

Grabe and Fredricka (2014) also presented that after reading the materials, students might

do some post reading tasks or activities in order to enhance their enjoyment and thinking in reading process Comfortably, the reading materials should contain a few difficult words which are below students’ language level As a result, students are capable of understanding the texts without any assistance and being motivated in discovering more and more reading materials and build their confidence in reading These reading texts are various in term of text types such as books, magazines, newspapers Jabobs (2014) is in line with Bamford (2005) and Grabe (2014) by stating that students barely could be more critical and dedicate their cognitive load to other activities In other words, they might take into consideration of the ideas in the reading with their own lives which may create a critical thinking for the learning Regarding to the enjoyment in reading, Jabobs (2014) asserts that if students are fond of the topic, the books or the authors, they will be ready to jump into reading and put their effort into comprehending the reading materials

Finally, the availability is also a main characteristic of a successful ER (Grabe & Fredricka, 2014) In order to read extensively, students need a wide range of reading materials for their reading These reading materials should be available and diverse enough for them to choose their favorite reading materials and they can take them home easily According to Bamford (2005), an idea condition for reading extensively is providing a large number of reading materials in the school librabry because students can lend them easily and choose whatever types of materials they want to read extensively at home

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2.2.2 Extensive Reading Benefits and its benefits into Vocabulary

According to Renandya (2007), one of the factors affect the unsuccessful learning and

in L2 classrooms are less chances to use L2 and lack of language input Therefore, it is necessary for the teachers to try to provide an L2 environment for the learners by having them immerse with the language through the books or non – printed materials Carrell and Grabe (2010) show that ER could be beneficial to L2 readers at all ages and proficiency levels By the same token, readers probably have benefits of ER concerning to learning attitudes, students’ spelling, vocabulary, reading ability and writing skills Moreover, Leaver, Ehrman, and Shekhtman (2005), Bamford, (2005), Carrell and Grabe (2010) Grabe and Fredricka (2014) emphasize great impact of ER on L2 language learning Bamford (2005) reaches the consensus with Leaver, Ehrman, and Shekhtman (2005) and shows the positive effect of ER regarding to the affective domain, ER increases students’ enjoyment and motivation in learning L2 By freely reading the materials which are appropriate to all students’ level, learner would not feel anxious or under any pressure in approaching the language Researchers explore that ER might boost learners’ language ability and competence such as vocabulary, grammar and spelling knowledge, writing and reading skills (Krashen,2015; Renandya,2007)

By the same token, ER puts the students into the different reading contexts in which they have

to activate their background knowledge to understand or deal with the content of the reading; thus, learners’ knowledge about the world will be widen and their critical thinking will be activated

The effectiveness of employing ER in teaching language is so obvious that Bamford (1998), Eziafa (2013), Teng (2015) and Renandya (2015) also point out that reading extensively is beneficial to the L2 learners in many ways such as developing language skills, grammar, and vocabulary (Naghmehsadat and Reza, 2014) Through substantial reading, the students are introduced to a more interesting way to read with understandable language, they could practice their reading skills effectively (Nwabudike and Anaso, 2013) Besides, ER supplies the students with the vocabulary because the readers have to get acquaintance with the new vocabularies and see the new words many times Therefore, the students would

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remember the use, spelling and meaning of the vocabulary

Furthermore, Krashen (2004 cited in Stoeckel, Reagan and Hann, 2012) points out the benefits of ER concerning to developing L2 fluency, writing style, grammatical competence and spelling Also, ER may be beneficial to the students in term of improving L2 reading rate, getting familiar with L2 reading passages or more difficult ones or better guessing unknown words from the contexts Harmer (2015) provides that ER have a good effect on not only reading comprehension but also spelling, writing, pronunciation and especially vocabulary recognition Nation (2004) is strongly agree on this aspect by confirming that one of the language goal is to improve learners’ vocabulary and ER could achieve this goal He also adds that reading one graded reader a week probably lead to a small amount of vocabulary growth.By identifying the benefits of ER, Nation and Waring (1997) assert that ER is a useful way to increase word knowledge and have the students exposed to more and more frequent and useful words because ER tends to prepare students with learning vocabulary in a specific context and make meaning of the words as well as enhance students’ memorization

2.2.3 Intensive reading versus Extensive reading

According to Extensive Reading Foundation, traditionally, students are teaching reading in order to learn the Vocabulary and Grammar or language knowledge through reading texts, which is so called – Intensive Reading (IR) The purpose of IR is that through the reading, learners are guided to learn something else, as a result, the texts are normally short Horwitz (2013) describes that IR is a type of reading which deeply comprehends short reading texts along with understand the content of the reading and its grammar or vocabulary Contradictory, ER is served to practice reading skills by reading for pleasure the long texts to get the meaning Moreover, ER is well known for improving students’ reading comprehension, developing learners’ reading fluency Lastly, if IR introduce the language through the reading texts, ER provide the learners with chances to practice and strengthen their language knowledge

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Jabobs (2014) posits that while in IR, students only read a short text which is less than two pages and with the instruct of the teachers, ER allows them to read a longer text, normally more than 5 pages without any help of the teachers Additionally, ER provides the students with implicit learning by training the students to read and guess the meaning from contexts, analyze the structures and their meaning; whereas students receive explicit instructions in IR from the teachers and deductively absorb the knowledge Conventionally, learning vocabulary happens in line with intensive reading which could not help the students to fully acquire the vocabulary knowledge As a result, another type of learning – ER could be employed in order

to bridge this gap

Table 1 Characteristics of Extensive Reading and Intensive Reading

Learner centered approach Teacher centered approach

Read a large number of long reading texts Read short passages

Reading for meaning and pleasure Reading for vocabulary, structure learning

and comprehension

Explicit learning process Implicit learning process

Taking place outside the class Taking place in class

Various topics and text types Limit topic and text types

Students choose what they want to read Teachers choose the materials

Incidental vocabulary learning Intentional vocabulary learning

It is recommended that ER program should be incorporated with IR due to some of the reasons (Horwitz , 2013) First of all, student would have opportunities to get both implicit and explicit learning at the same time, they might receive the benefits of self - learning and

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instructed learning in and outside the classroom Secondly, their language skills are improved especially reading ability, vocabulary and grammars At one time, IR and ER support for each other, IR needs ER to help the learners experience the language naturally whereas ER need IR

to facilitate the knowledge, reinforce the language structures and vocabulary

2.2.4 What is Vocabulary

Nation (2001) asserts that L2 learners need to know a large number of words in L2 because all kinds of language skills are represented through vocabulary Thornbury (2002) confirmed that without vocabulary not a single thing can be imparted Practically, if learners

do not acquire enough the number of vocabulary, they will lack of the needed vocabulary for

a successful communication High chances that in speaking, students cannot express something because the vocabulary size is not wide enough In term of reading, if you do not have enough a certain number of vocabulary, you are not able to read and understand the texts completely Regarding to listening, learners only achieve the listening comprehension by having a great number of words Last but not least, the success in a writing work heavily rely

on how diverse the vocabulary the writer obtains The importance of Vocabulary in L2 learning is likely to be so apparent that receiving the attention of most of the L2 learners and educators Hollingsworth and Ybarra (2013) also defined that Vocabulary is “all the words that make up a language”

According to Davies and Pearse (2000), vocabulary plays a crucial role in learning target language because without the necessary number of vocabulary, learners cannot use the language effectively It is assumed that knowing a word does not mean know how to use it because of the underlying structure of the word Leaver, Ehrman and Shekhtman (2005) indicate that high chances of performing the language better are happened if students attain a large number of vocabulary They basically can have more options in choosing the needed vocabulary and comprehend the reading messages greatly due to the word understanding (Leaver, Ehrman, & Shekhtman, 2005)

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2.2.5 How the Vocabulary is acquired

In order to understand how vocabulary is acquired, Leaver, Ehrman, and Shekhtman (2005) hold that the first step of storing information in human brain is paying attention to the item In details, if we tend to notice of the vocabulary item, we would likely to take it and it enters our cognitive system If we are not aware of the items, there would not have chances that information is absorbed Not only noticing the item, learners need to understand it when they encounter it from the spoken or written language so as to remember it The next stage of memorizing language item is that repeating the language item by drilling or work it out so as

to attach the item to the previous knowledge which existed in advance By the same token, Thornbury (2002) mentions the process such as long-term memory, short term memory and working memory as representatives Leaver, Ehrman and Shekhtman (2005) illustrate that after the information is noticed and understood, it is stored in short term memory within twenty seconds At this stage, the information might be forgotten or transfer into long term memory relies mostly on the rehearsal of the information In order to maintain the stored information, learners need to use what they have learned and more importantly, they need to have opportunities to encounter the item in reading, writing, speaking or listening for a long period

of time After recycling the vocabulary continuously, the vocabulary is going to move to long term memory and this memory could last three years Finally, in long term memory, provided that the information is recalled, refreshed and activated several times, it is likely to be moved

to permanent memory which could last theoretically forever (Leaver, Ehrman, & Shekhtman, 2005)

As suggested in Leaver, Ehrman, and Shekhtman (2005), ER is confirmed to help the information, especially vocabulary, to move from short term memory to long term and permanent memory The more readers read in one topic, the more they become familiar with the vocabulary of that lexical set Given that if the reader approach 80% of the words in a passage, the 20% remaining could easily be learned rather than the brand-new topic In addition, Leaver, Ehrman and Shekhtman (2005) are also in line with Scrivener (2011) by confirming that teacher has to make the vocabulary from understanding the knowledge to

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knowing how it is used by working with it through many productive activities and tasks

According to Nation (2017), in order for vocabulary learning occurrence, two fundamental conditions need to be meet that are the repetition of the words and meeting the words in a high quality which is so – called quantity and quality of learning the words As cited in Nation (2017), the more the words are met as well as the higher the learning process quality is, the greater chances of vocabulary learning are happened Regarding to the quanity

of words meetings, Nation (2017) affirms some elements that affect the quanity of a word such

as the number of meeting of words (repetition), the density of unknown words in the texts, the number of unknown words and the frequency of words in spoken and written texts In this light, it is explained that vocabulary knowledge involves the process of accumulating each word (Thornbury, 2002)

Despite the impact of these factors on vocabulary learning, they do not affect the vocabulary learning directly but repetition Consequently, only one meeting for each word is not enough for obtaining the information of a word but more word repetition within a long period of time is needed Nation (2001) also emphasizes that repetition is important for vocabulary because in order to know a word, students have to encounter it at least 8 – 10 times and know such many aspects as knowing its form, meaning and use (Waring, 2011)

According to Carrell and Grabe (2010), there are four strands of learning vocabulary that are learning vocabulary through listening and reading (meaning – focused input), learning vocabulary through Speaking and writing (meaning – focused output), deliberate vocabulary learning and developing fluency with vocabulary across the four skills Among the four strands, learning vocabulary from meaning – focused input is emphasized as the most common strands in teaching vocabulary It is explained that meaning focused input provide learners with incidental learning through listening and especially reading In order to employ this strand, three conditions should be met that is, first, the number of unknown words in the reading should less than 2% in a reading text Second, the language number of input and last, the intentional attention of new words As can be seen, ER totally meets all of the requirements

of learning vocabulary through meaning focused input

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When teaching the new words, teacher should draw on the students’ memorization by providing more activities for students to meet the words as several times as possible and work with the words (Nation, 2017) Furthermore, Hollingsworth and Ybarra (2013) suggest that teachers ought not to explain the meaning of new words separately but when they appear in the reading texts In this way, students’ understanding of the reading texts is increased and new words in the reading texts are memorized better The more the words are used in meaningful contexts, the more students remember them Also, the various ways that vocabulary is presented, the better students can visualize them Teacher can use illustration, mime, synonyms, antonyms, giving definition in a context, translation, providing definition for each presentation

2.2.6 What is vocabulary development?

Nation (2001) mentioned that vocabulary development means learners’ vocabulary size

is increasing Hollingsworth and Ybarra (2013) reach a consensus with Nation (2001) by mentioning that vocabulary development means learning more words as possible In order for the vocabulary acquisition occurrence, learners need to pay attention to what they are reading

or hearning As a consequence, the input from the written and spoken form needs to be interesting and easy to understand Therefore, comprehensible input is suggested for developing vocabulary Leaver, Ehrman, and Shekhtman (2005) are in line with Nation and Waring (1997) in providing that voracious readers might have high chances in building the vocabulary Similarly, Teng (2015) suggests that reading is the way of acquiring vocabulary through incidental learning process and especially ER could make the incidental vocabulary learning happen To understand how ER could be extremely beneficial to vocabulary development, vocabulary domain should be clearly grasped

There are two schools of developing vocabulary which are implicit vocabulary development and explicit vocabulary development While implicit vocabulary development is presented to learn vocabulary depends on exposing the language through independent reading which also called ER, explicit vocabulary development emphasizes on the role of the teachers

in teaching vocabulary overtly The idea behind implicit vocabulary development is that

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learners need to pick up the vocabulary through reading independently because the number of words that is taught explicitly is not enough for the students (Nation, 2017)

2.2.7 What vocabulary need to be learnt

It is advised that teachers should choose carefully the vocabulary to teach so as to provide the students the most useful words to activate the utmost language learning and production (Nation, 2001) By the same token, Schmitt (1997) informs the significant role of the deciding high priority words to focus on in L2 learning Whether a word is often or not,

it relies on the words frequency – the high frequency words and low frequency words Nation and Waring (1997) present that teachers should teach high frequency words because these words attain a large propotion of running words in texts and appear in all types of language uses (Thornbury, 2002) Actually, these words are content words; thus, they allow the students

to have better condition of comprehending the spoken and written texts rather than the low frequency words – “a large group of words that occurs quite infrequently and cover a small proportion of any text.”, as cited in (Thornbury, 2002) Once the important words are chosen, some aspects of the words need to be known such as its meaning, form, pronunciation, spelling, collocation, connotation and how it is used in different contexts As Schmitt (1997) cited, after the high frequency words are learned, teachers need to help the learners to develop vocabulary learning strategies to comprehend the words and then moving to the low frequency words

One the other hand, Jeanne (2007) points out a different perspective that is the number

of words learners have to attain depend mostly on their needs Jeanne (2007) and Thornbury (2002) reach a consensus that learners should know mostly 2000 high frequency words However; Jeanne (2007) adds that students should know from 2000 to 5000 high frequency words so as to understand nearly 80 – 88,7% of an average text (see table 1) On the other hand, Schmitt (1997) informs that learner need to know 3000 or so high frequency words In order to decide whether a word is a high frequency word or not, text coverage is needed to be

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checked which given by successive frequency ranked groups of words

Table 2 Vocabulary size and text coverage in the Brown corpus

2.3.1 Comprehensible Input Hypothesis

Input is the “sample of language” or meaning – bearing language which learners are exposed to in many types of settings from hearing to seeing, as defined in Wong (2005) He maitains that Input plays a significant role in for second language acquisition (Wong, 2005) Krashen (2015) illustrated that L2 acquisition happens only when learners expose to sufficient comprehensible input Brown (2007) agrees with this concept and adds that the more input is provided, the more L2 acquisition is shaped Therefore, ER is an ideal approach to have

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student meet language input and Renandya (2007) states that the theoretical framework of ER

is Input Hypothesis or so called – Comprehension Input Hypothesis formalized by Stephen Krashen in 2004 He explained that when the optimal comprehensible input is obtained, learners seem to acquire the language naturally It is also point out that formal instruction is not useful for language acquisition This viewpoint is quite different from Vietnamese teachers who mostly believe that students can only learn English at school with formal instruction Comprehensible Input theory mentions that the only way to learn the language is understanding messages that the language transfer by understanding what we read and get what we listen Comprehensible Input Hypothesis also points out such conditions that language learning occurs are providing learners with abundant and regularly available input, immersing them with comprehensible input and supplying them with slightly above their language level input It is reported that three conditions would be met if the students read extensively

Wong (2005) agreed with Krashen (2015) in term of the crucial role of comprehensible input toward the L2 acquisition He explained that L2 acquisition can take place in the absence

of formal instruction Wing (1987 cited in Wong, 2005) explains that in order to make the input more beneficial to the L2 acquisition, learners need to attend to the input and connect it

to make meaningful works ER offered students several chances to read interesting and appropriate reading materials As the same time, their affective filter which makes up learners’ language feeling in learning could be declined to take in more language input (Horwitz E K., 2013) It is advocated that knowing a word means know a large number of meanings which it contains, its collocation and its register (Zimmerman, 2014, p 44) Traditionally, students approach a word in a decontextualized lexis because they encounter the vocabulary in only one meaning in one circumstance Therefore, there is a need for the better vocabulary learning which is introduced in ER - a meaning focused reading

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Renandya, Rajan, and Jacobs (2009) once again emphasize the role of reading and listening in receiving language input Especially, they point out that Reading extensively is a crucial strand to receive language input for second language development, as can be concluded

in Figure 1 L2 develops through language input and output While reading extensively and listening to summaries and answering the questions could provide the learners with language input, writing summary and retelling the stories and answering the questions are likely to meet the aim of output engagement Krashen (2015) also emphasizes the significant role of reading

on vocabulary development He explained that reading is one of the best receptive skills which could provide the students with more vocabulary The understandable language is also called comprehensible input and He hypothesized that the Comprehensible Input hypothesis play a crucial role in L2 learning Comprehensible Input Hypothesis presents that students would

Development

Facilitated by

Listening to Answers to Questions

Writing

Answers Questions

Figure 1 Input and output opportunities provided in the ER (Renandya, Rajan, & Jacobs, 2009)

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acquire language better if they are exposed to the understandable input repeatedly and continuously If learners acquire the language by understandable messages over a long time, the consistency of Comprehensible Input is strong enough to help the students either improve their vocabulary and spelling or reading skills (Herrmann, 2013) Gradually, students could learn the language by adding the new knowledge to the previous one, as so called – i+1 hypothesis Nation (2001) mentions that vocabulary learning is a gradual process which meets with a word strengthening the amount of previous knowledge obtained in the meetings before However, in order to meet the requirements of ER treatment, students should be read more materials which are a little bit lower than their recent level which is so called i minus 1 (R & Bamford, 1998)

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Adapting to this framework of research, in order to assess vocabulary knowledge and skills, there are two types of lexical instructions that are implicit and explicit instruction If explicit lexical instructions are studying decontextualized lexis, employing dictionary and inferring vocabulary meaning from context, implicit lexical instructions focusing on only one type that is meaning focused reading Apparently, Nation (2017) reach a consensus that in four

Elaborating Vocabulary Knowledge

Developing Fluency

Increasing Vocabulary Size through Extensive Reading

Consolidating Previously Met

Using Decontextualised Dictionaries

Lexis

Studying

IMPLICIT LEXICAL INSTRUCTION AND LEARNING STRATEGIES

EXPLICIT LEXICAL INSTRUCTION AND LEARNING STRATEGIES

ASESSING VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE

AND SKILLS

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

Figure 2 A Framework for Developing EFL Reading Vocabulary by Renandya, Rajan, and Jacobs (2009)

or stories plot

Furthermore, Extensive Reading Foundation asserts that GRs are series of books which are well - written according to the different levels for all types of language learners to improve their reading speech and fluency Horwitz (2013) is in line with Waring (2011) by expressing that GRs are constructed materials and written to be appropriate with readers’ level Each book

in GRs are classified into some certain levels which help the readers know what level of the book and how many new words in the book It is identified that there are 6 levels of each GR The level is ranging from Starter to Advanced level which could be named differently in distinguished publishers For example, if Starters, Beginner, Elementary, Pre – intermediate, Intermediate, Upper are the levels of Macmillan readers, Oxford University Press classified the graded readers of levels into Starters, 1 and 2 for Elementary level, 3 and 4 equivalent to Intermediate level and 5 for Upper Intermediate level and 6 in relation to Advanced level Additionally, the reading topics in the GRs are well – chosen so as to catch the learners’ interest Students would read quickly without stopping to check the dictionaries and their reading enjoyment might be maintained for a long time (Waring, 2011)

The effectiveness of GRs is also proved by their ability to deepen the language knowledge

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of readers through the repeated words they met once in their course book, once in the GRs (Waring, 2011) With respect to the layout of GRs, it is attractive enough with their vivid illustrations and colorful book covers It is informed that GRs could control the vocabulary in the reading and make use of the high frequency words together with get rid of the low frequency words It is suggested that learners should read one GR a week in order to provide enough input for their language acquisition (Bamford, 2005) As introduced in Leaver, Ehrman, and Shekhtman (2005), students might make progresses in reading if they choose carefully and appropriate reading materials for themselves The reading materials should not

be too hard or too easy, but it should present at least 85% of their known vocabulary

2.5 Previous Studies

Table 3 The previous study on the benefits of ER

Country Year Author Students’ levels

2013 Wang Lower-level EFL

students France 2006 Pigada,

Schmitt

27-year-old student

 Increase spelling, meaning and grammatical knowledge

 Increase vocabulary

vocabulary greatly

 Improve 4 language skills

 Increase positive attitude in learning

2013 Eziafa University

students