A study on students’ use of reading comprehension strategies a case of 10th form students

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OFPOST-GRADUATE STUDIES ---TRẦN THỊ THANH LOAN A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ USE OF READING COMPREHEN

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF

POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-TRẦN THỊ THANH LOAN

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ USE OF READING COMPREHENSION

STRATEGIES: A CASE OF 10TH FORM STUDENTS

(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁCH HỌC SINH SỬ DỤNG CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐỌC HIỂU: TRƯỜNG HỢP CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRUNG HỌC

PHỔ THÔNG)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF

POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-TRẦN THỊ THANH LOAN

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ USE OF READING COMPREHENSION

STRATEGIES: A CASE OF 10TH FORM STUDENTS

(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁCH HỌC SINH SỬ DỤNG CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐỌC HIỂU: TRƯỜNG HỢP CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRUNG HỌC

PHỔ THÔNG)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Phuong Nga

Hanoi, 2014

universities or institutions I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library can

be accessible for the purposes of study and research

Hanoi, 2014

Trần Thị Thanh Loan

my study would not have been fulfilled.

My sincere thanks also go to all the staff of the Department of Post-GraduateStudies for giving me assistance and the lecturers who conducted the Master course for

me with valuable knowledge and experience so that I was able to conduct this study

I would like to extend my deep appreciation to my colleagues and students atPham Hong Thai high school for their cooperation and support so that I could complete

my necessary data collection for the study

Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my family and friends,who have always been by my side to encourage and support me during the process of thisresearch Without their help and encouragement, I could not have completed this study

This is the study on students’ use of reading comprehension strategies The target population is the 10 th form students at Pham Hong Thai high school The main aims of this study are to discover the current situation of applying reading strategies of the 10 th form students, and to figure out how to enhance their reading comprehension To achieve these objectives, the researcher uses (1) survey questionnaire for the students, and (2) unstructured interview for English teachers The results of the questionnaires show that the students are aware of the importance of reading comprehension in general and reading strategies in particular Additionally, the reading strategies applied by the students are restricted and not frequently Besides, the interview’s result indicates that teachers also apply only some of the reading strategies in their reading lessons including scanning, skimming and guessing new words in context The researcher also finds it possible to enhance student’s reading comprehension with the use of reading strategies according to the teaching methods of teachers in the interview Acknowledging the obstacles and the students’ positive attitudes towards the use of reading strategies, it is recommended that more reading strategies be used and adapted in the class time to meet the individuals’ needs and abilities.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, FIGURES AND TABLES

ABBREVIATIONS:

FIGURES AND TABLES:

Figure 1: The importance of reading comprehension

Figure 2: Students’ purposes of learning reading in English

Figure 3: The difficulties in reading a text

Figure 4: The importance of having good reading strategies

Table 1: Background Information of the Subjects

Table 2: Results of predicting strategy

Table 3: Results of skimming strategy

Table 4: Results of scanning strategy

Table 5: Results of inferring strategy

Table 6: Results of guessing meaning strategy

Table 7: Results of self – monitoring strategy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, FIGURES AND TABLES iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS v

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1

2 Aims and objectives of the studies 2

3 Significance of the study 2

4 Research methodology of the study 2

5 Scope of the study 3

6 Design of the Study 3

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Reading comprehension 4

1.2 Reading strategies 6

1.3 Teaching and learning reading strategies 9

1.4 Researches on reading strategies 11

CHAPTER 2: THE METHODOLOGY 17

2.1 An overview of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks) 17

2.2 Objectives and method of the study 19

2.3 The participants of the study 19

2.4 Instruments of data collection 21

2.5 Data collection procedures 22

2.6 Data analysis procedures 23

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH’S RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 24

3.1 The survey questionnaire results 24

3.2 The interview results 32

PART 3: CONCLUSION 36

1 Conclusions 36

2 Limitations of the study 38

3 Suggestions for further study 38

REFERENCES 40

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

Teaching a foreign language in general and English in particular requires greatknowledge, experiences and efforts

According to Carrell (1984:1), “for many students, reading is by far the mostimportant of the four macro skills, particularly in English as a second or a foreignlanguage” Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because itsupports learning in many ways Firstly, reading material is a language input Studentsgiven a variety of materials to read have many opportunities to absorb vocabulary,grammar, sentence structure and discourse structure Secondly, reading for contentinformation in the language classroom provides students with both authentic readingmaterial and an authentic purpose for reading Thirdly, reading helps students broadentheir knowledge of the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they arestudying

Researchers believe that teaching productive reading strategies motivate students

to read and facilitate reading comprehension (Anderson, 2003; Eskey, 2002; Grabe,2004) It also appears that good students apply a variety of reading strategies to theirlearning Therefore, the importance of teaching reading strategies is to not also facilitatestudents’ reading process but help student enrich their vocabulary and grammar as well

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

Thus, this study is conducted to investigate the use of reading strategies of the 10thgrade students at Pham Hong Thai high school Although almost all 10th form studentshave learnt English since grade 6, many of them do not know or use appropriate readingstrategies yet As a result, they can become easily frustrated when they do not understandwhat they are reading, and they become demotivated

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

named “A study on students’ use of reading comprehension strategies: A case of 10 th form students”.

2 Aims and objectives of the studies

Firstly, the research is carried out to investigate the current use of readingcomprehension strategies applied by the 10th form students in Pham Hong Thai highschool Secondly, the study is to figure out how to enhance 10th form students’ readingcomprehension Therefore, the research is to seek answers to the following researchquestions:

1. What are reading strategies currently applied by 10 th form students in Pham Hong Thai high school?

2. How to improve 10 th form students’ reading comprehension?

3. Significance of the study

Once successfully completed, the study’s findings and discussions are expected to

be beneficial to English teachers, the 10th forms students, the researcher herself as well asother researchers Firstly, teachers of English can recognize the significant benefits, ifany, of strategies in teaching reading comprehension Based on the findings, teacherscould adapt their current situation of teaching reading so that they could improve theirstudents’ reading comprehension Also, there are some suggested solutions for teachers toprepare an efficient technique to motivate students’ participation in their studying and toteach them how to read effectively Secondly, reading comprehension strategies canprovide students with self-study to improve their reading skills and to face readingcomprehension difficulties Additionally, this study is expected to bring the researcher aninvaluable experience as it provides her with knowledge and techniques to teach readingcomprehension strategies Finally, the findings of this study are hoped to offer reliableand updated information for interested and further studies

4 Research methodology of the study

This study is conducted as a descriptive study that applied qualitative approach.The qualitative analysis is employed mainly through the process of data collected from a

written survey questionnaire delivered to 10th form students to examine the use ofreading strategies, and through an unstructured group interview which is carried out toteachers to find out how to improve 10th form students’ reading comprehension.

5 Scope of the study

According to the Ministry of Education and Training’s requirements, high schoolstudents have to be taught all four skills including reading, speaking, listening, andwriting However, it is because of the large size of the class and test – oriented thatEnglish lesson focuses more on reading Thus, this research only put the emphasis on theuse of reading strategies of the 10th form students, who are at the beginning of highschool but have just learnt English for more than 5 years

6 Design of the Study

The thesis consists of three main parts: introduction, development and conclusion The Introduction aims at the rationale, the aims, the scope, and also the design ofthe study

The Development consists of three chapters Chapter 1is Literature Review Thischapter reviews some theories of basic concept based on the publications in the field Theresults from the recent studies for the issues related to the aspects of the subject in thesame field are also presented Chapter 2 is the Methodology In this chapter, the authorpresents the research methodology and the instruments used to collect data from thequestionnaire for the students and the unstructured group interview with teachers Theprocedure of collecting data and the analysis of the survey data is also describedcarefully Chapter 3 is the Research Findings and Discussion which presents theresearch’s findings (i.e analysis of data, results) and discussion

In the Conclusion, the author presents the conclusions and limitations of the study

as well as some suggestions for the further related studies

This chapter is followed by the References and Appendices

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this first chapter, the theoretical background, literature on the concept of readingcomprehension, and reading strategies are going to be thoroughly presented This chapteralso analyzes some studies on reading strategies that have been conducted so far so thatthe researcher could discuss on the results later

When it comes to reading in second language, Williams (1984:2) stated thatreading is “a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been written… Thereader does not necessarily need to look at everything in a given piece of writing Thereader is not simply a passive object, fed with letters, words and sentences, but is activelyworking on the text and is able to arrive at understanding without looking at every letterand word.”

Anderson (2003:68) offered another definition of reading, which is “a fluentprocess of readers combining information from a text and their own backgroundknowledge to build meaning The goal of reading is comprehension.”

Although these definitions are expressed differently, they convey the same ideathat reading is a selective process and characterized as an active process ofcomprehending Thus, the reader’s knowledge of the language and knowledge of theworld is of great importance to their reading success

1.1.2 Reading comprehension

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

Reading comprehension can be understood as the ability to obtain the information

as required in the reading text as efficiently as possible Different scholars offered variouspoints of view on the definition of reading comprehension

According to Richard, Thomas and Jere (1987: 143), reading comprehension is

a mental process that in the final analysis, only the readers fully understand.Comprehension is what stimulates readers to remember the past experience Thatknowledge is, then, used in trying to get meaning out of print Meaning does notreside on the printed page but rather in the meaning of the reader

Roe, Stoodt and Burns (1987:2) proposed that “reading comprehension is

reconstruction, interpretation and evaluation of what author of written content means byusing knowledge gained from life experience”

According to interactive model of reading, comprehension is built up or constructedfrom knowledge sources which interact with each other on the input from the writtenpage

Comprehension, by definition, is the process of relating new or incominginformation to information already stored in memory Readers make connectionsbetween the new information on the printed page and their existing knowledge.They must allow the new information to enter and become a part of their knowledgestore

(Lee and Vanpatten, 1995:191)

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

- a clear purpose in mind

- an enhanced motivation

- appropriate reading comprehension strategies based on the purposes andmotivation

- good prediction

- sufficient background information and vocabulary

- close attention to the significant bits

- fairly high speedFrom these opinions, what comes up as a common point is that readingcomprehension is not only simply understanding what is written, but also is whatstimulates students to remember from their experiences That knowledge is then used toget meaning out of printed page, but in the mind of the readers, which included facts,emotion, belief and critical evaluation It can be concluded that reading comprehension is

the process of understanding what is conveyed in the text That means, the readers (or thelearners), as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understandwhat is implied behind these forms.

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

Brown (1990) considered reading strategies as the ways that help learners readmore quickly and effectively

Another definition of reading strategies was given by O’ Malley & Chamot (1990)

is that the term reading strategies refers to those conscious and unconscious procedures,actions, techniques or behavior that learners employ so as to enhance theircomprehension and make up for interpretation problems

In short, although many different definitions were given, what can be come upwith is that all the above mentioned definition supported each other What is more,reading strategies can be defined as the ways show readers how to manage theirinteraction with the written text to comprehend and learn new information from thereading texts effectively

1.2.2 Classifications

Researchers in reading strategy studies have utilized different strategy types whencategorizing reading strategies

Block (1986) and Carrell (1989) categorized reading strategies they found into general or global strategies and local strategies Whereas local strategies constitute a category of decoding strategies, global strategies are related to top-down types of reading,including getting the gist of a reading, utilizing background knowledge, and being aware

of text organization

According to Barnett (1988), this process may involve skimming, scanning,guessing, recognizing cognates and word families, reading for meaning, predicting,activating general knowledge, making inferences, following references and separatingmain ideas from supporting ones

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

 Prediction

Prediction refers to the technique of using the readers’ prior knowledge to guessthe meaning or the message of the text from the topics, pictures, key words, orconstructions It is one of the most effective factors that motivate students to read andunderstand the meaning of the context (Oxford, 1990)

Scanning is quite similar to skimming in that both of them require a quick glance

of a text The difference is that in skimming, readers try to get the general or maininformation of the text but in scanning, the readers would like to obtain specificinformation In scanning technique, readers are looking to find particular information –the answer to his/her questions

 Inferring

Inferring refers to activities of reading between the lines which means that readersneed to know how to get the message from the words and sentences in a text So,inferring is defined as the interaction between words in a sentence/phrase or betweensentences or phrases (Kristin, Leah, & Soro, 2009)

 Guessing the meaning of new words

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

In conclusion, different scholars classified reading strategies using different terms,and not in all contexts that learners can apply all the above mentioned reading strategies.They rather base on the purpose of reading to utilize one/ some/ or all of them to read.Hence, the importance of reading strategies should be aware of

Reading strategies are important as they help readers to reach their reading goalsand achieve good results in reading (Block, 1986) As such, students or readers who donot use any strategies in reading usually face difficulties in reading comprehension

Regarding the importance of reading strategies, readers often encounter problems

in reading the text and have difficulties in understanding the meaning of the context but

reading strategies help them in learning foreign language and reading comprehension Infact, students will be able to relate newly acquired information to their prior knowledge

in context areas which is an essential part of reading comprehension skill

According to Dehnad (2005), reading strategy provides learning opportunities,facilitates learning and recalling of information as well as strengthening the readingcomprehension ability of language learners Learners need to be explicitly taught how toproperly use reading strategies to monitor their reading comprehension Through theemployment of reading strategy such as meta-cognitive instruction in English class, EFLlearners will be able to improve their reading comprehension and experience a higherlevel of competency which will further motivate them to read on a regular basis (Block,1992)

Chamot (2005) stated that students have their own preference of strategy, but inorder to become motivated and selective strategy users, EFL learners should self monitortheir reading strategy In other words, EFL learners need to consciously know what andwhen to apply appropriate reading strategy when comprehension fails

All in all, it can be denied that reading strategies are of great importance towardssecond language learners Hence, students should be exposed to multiple readingstrategies as well as the appropriate use of those strategies for better results In addition,students should be taught to become more aware of their own reading behavior and theprocesses involved in reading to employ the reading strategies effectively

This study adopted Oxford’s classification of reading strategies

1.3 Teaching and learning reading strategies

As acknowledged by many researchers, teaching second or foreign languagereaders how to use strategies should be part of every reading lesson

Learning reading strategies refers to any sets of activities, stages, programs, ortechniques that help students to keep, achieve, or evaluate information (Wenden & Rubin,1987) Teachers can help students learn when and how to use reading strategies in severalways

Firstly, teachers can model the strategies aloud, talking through the processes ofpredicting, skimming, scanning, inferring, guessing the meaning of new words and self-

monitoring This shows students how the strategies work and how much they can know about a text before they begin to read word by word.

 Predicting: using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions aboutcontent and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the texttype and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using knowledgeabout the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content

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

 Scanning: looking through a text very rapidly for specific information

 Inferring: finding clues and add those clues to what have been known or read based on prior knowledge

 Guessing the meaning of new words: using prior knowledge of the subject and theideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping tolook them up

 Self – monitoring: checking comprehension during reading

Secondly, teachers should allow time in class for group and individual to previewand predict activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading Allocating classtime to these activities indicates their importance and value

Another way teachers can utilize is using cloze exercises to review vocabularyitems This helps students learn to guess meaning from context

Last but not least, teachers are advised to encourage students to talk about whatstrategies they think will help them approach a reading assignment, and then talking afterreading about what strategies they actually used This helps students develop flexibility intheir choice of strategies

As regards students, they need to figure out the purpose for reading Additionally,they should activate their background knowledge of the topic in order to predict oranticipate content and identify appropriate reading strategies Next, they should selectstrategies that are appropriate to the reading tasks and use them flexibly and interactively.Finally, students have to check comprehension while reading and when the reading task

is completed Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistencies andcomprehension failures, helping them learn to use alternate strategies.

It can be concluded that when students use reading strategies, they find that theycan control the reading experience, and they gain confidence in their ability to read thelanguage

1.4 Research on reading strategies

A considerable number of studies examined the comprehension strategies thatsecond language readers apply to process a text Obviously, the participants were of manydifferent ages, levels and backgrounds Furthermore, the investigators used a variety ofresearch method and tasks to examine strategy type and frequency of strategy useincluding think-aloud reports, interviews, questionnaires, observations and writtenrecalls

1.4.1 Foreign research on reading strategies

In a second-language study, Hosenfeld (1977) used a think-aloud procedure toidentify relations between certain types of reading strategies and successful orunsuccessful second language reading The successful reader, for example, kept themeaning of the passage in mind while reading read in broad phrases, skippedinconsequential or less important words, and had a positive self-concept as a reader Theunsuccessful reader on the other hand, lost the meaning of the sentences when decoded,read in short phrases, pondered over inconsequential words, seldom skipped words asunimportant, and had a negative self-concept

Carrell (1989) carried out the research with two groups of students: the speaking group and English- speaking group The instrument was questionnaires to findout the relationship between the reading strategies used by first and second languagelearners and their reading ability The results indicated that the perception of strategiesbetween good L1 readers and good L2 readers had some differences The Spanish-speaking learners of English perceived global or top down strategies more effectively,whereas local or bottom-up strategies were associated with English- speaking learners’reading ability in the L2

Spanish-Anderson (1991) investigated the differences in reading strategy use by adultsecond language learners The results revealed that both high and low scoring readersappeared to be using the same kinds of strategies while answering the comprehensionquestions; however, high scoring students seemed to be applying strategies moreeffectively and appropriately.

Block (1992) investigated the comprehension monitoring process used by first andsecond language readers of English The subjects were 25 college freshmen and consisted

of proficient and non-proficient readers of English While reading an expository text, theparticipants were asked to think aloud or more specifically, to "say everything theyunderstood and everything they were thinking as they read each sentence" (Block, 1992:323) The results indicated that when facing a vocabulary problem, proficient ESLreaders used background knowledge, decided on whether the word contributed to theoverall meaning of the passage, reread the sentence and used syntactic clues Themeaning-based strategies are classified as global behaviors On the other hand, non-proficient ESL readers focused on identifying lexical problems and did little to figure outthe meaning of the words

Sugirin (1999) used a multi-method study to explore the comprehension strategies

of EFL readers The research methods used were think-aloud protocol analysis, retellings,

a reading comprehension test, in-depth interviews and casual observations The resultsindicated that there were noticeable gaps among the participants in the degree ofcomprehension and the strategies used Additionally, the subjects were found to sharecharacteristics of both poor and good readers In the think-aloud activity, they skimmedthe whole text at the beginning although they were instructed to read it sentence bysentence, which indicates that their strategies follow top-down processing, considered acharacteristic of good readers’ strategies

Hung (2001) investigated the frequency and types of reading strategies used bythird-year male and female students in senior high school The findings showed that therewas a significant difference by gender in the reading comprehension ability, in whichfemale students were better than male students However, there was no significantdifference between male and female students in terms of overall strategy use Besides, no

significant difference is found between male and female students when they readnarrative and expository materials separately.

Ahmad and Asraf (2004) did a research study on the underlying strategies used bysecond language learners in responding to English texts This case study investigated howthe learners made an effort to comprehend the texts by selecting, understanding andintegrating information in the context of eight reading comprehension sub-skills in theform of comprehension questions, such as word meaning, words in context, literalcomprehension, drawing inferences from single strings, etc The results suggested that thesame comprehension answering strategies were used by the good and average readers.However, the good readers were more consistently focused on each question type thanthe average ones; they articulated their comprehension answering strategies more often

on each question type than the average readers

In conclusion, the findings of all the above – mentioned researches in readingstrategies revealed that reading strategies facilitated their comprehension proficiency.Additionally, there are indeed differences between successful or good readers, and lesssuccessful or poor readers in terms of strategy use The results showed that successfulreaders know how to use reading strategies efficiently.There is also a strong relationshipbetween reading strategies and proficiency level Poor readers failed to ask questions,take notes or use a dictionary as often as good readers Overall, good readers appear touse a wider range of strategies with higher frequency than poor readers do Besides, there

is no significant difference between male and female students in terms of overall strategyuse

1.4.2 Vietnamese research on reading strategies

Ha (2006) carried out a study named “A study on English reading strategiesemployed by the second year Bridge and Road students at University of Transport andCommunications” The aim of the study was to examine the differences in the readingstrategies employed by the good and poor readers among a group of 13 second year nonEnglish majors at the University of Transport and Communications In this study, bothquantitative and qualitative approaches were employed The quantitative analyses wasemployed through the process of data collected from a written questionnaire and think-

aloud reports to examine the differences between the good and bad readers in theirreading strategies In addition, the qualitative approach is used to deal with the datacollected from interviews with these two groups of readers Based on the analysis of datafrom questionnaires and think-aloud reports, the study showed that the good or effectiveand bad or ineffective readers significantly differed from each other in the frequency ofstrategy use The effective readers tended to use the metacognitive and cognitivestrategies much more frequently than the ineffective ones.

Huong (2007) carried out a study called “How to Improve ReadingComprehension of the 10th-Form Students at Le Hong Phong High School” Theobjectives of the study were to investigate the real situation of teaching and learningreading at Le Hong Phong High School, the difficulties in reading that the 10th-formstudents often cope with so as to give some suggestions for improving their readingcomprehension The study employed the qualitative approach involving two surveyquestionnaires with 97 tenth form students and 8 teachers of English at Le Hong PhongHigh School to collect the data for the study The findings revealed that the teachers wereaware of many factors that affect students’ reading comprehension, and there were fourmain factors that should be taken into consideration for the 10th-form students, namelystudents’ lack of background knowledge and world knowledge, students’ low motivation,students’ limited vocabulary and grammatical structures and their lack of appropriatereading strategies Additionally, the findings of the study also indicated that there was abig gap between what the teachers have done to motivate the students and what thestudents prefer The majority of students prefer having supplementary reading texts forextensive reading They want their teachers to provide them with reading strategies, how

to read efficiently Besides, it reveals that the teachers do not make full use of games andvisual aids of which catch the interest of most the students

Sao (2008) conducted a study to investigate students’ difficulties in reading texts

in the new textbook for grade 10 at Nghi Loc IV high school according to theirperceptions The study employed semi-structured interviews will be conducted on agroup of 20 tenth form students to collect the data The findings of the study showed thatwhen learning reading skills the students encounter difficulties in vocabulary, grammar,

background knowledge and reading tasks The findings also showed that despite theawareness of the importance of reading, some students had negative attitude towardlearning English which made their reading more difficult Moreover, students were notequipped with necessary skills to become successful readers and some units, readingtasks were not appropriate for the students’ levels Finally, inefficient teaching methodsand classroom techniques might be other causes of the students’ difficulties.

Linh (2009) implemented a study among 100 eleventh form students and tenteachers at Phan Dang Luu high school to investigate the current situation of teaching andlearning reading comprehension of the 11th form students to find out advantages as well

as problems facing both teachers and students in reading lessons, and to suggest usefultechniques to develop the reading comprehension skills in the while- reading stage for the

11th form in Phan Dang Luu high school The research method included consultingrelated materials, survey questionnaires and reading lessons observations The thesispresented some useful techniques accompanied by a number of activities to developcertain reading skills for students in the while- reading stage, i.e reading for generalunderstanding, reading for specific information and reading for further understanding.Additionally, the statistics indicated that both students and teachers have positiveattitudes toward teaching and learning reading However the while- reading activities theteachers used were not sufficient enough to develop their students reading skills

Huong (2010) conducted a study applying quantitative method includingcomprehension tests and survey questionnaires to investigate the reading strategiesutilized by readers among 32 ethnic minority junior first-year English-majored students at

Tay Bac University The findings confirmed that the readers rarely or sometimes

employed top-down or tended to combine top-down and bottom-up strategies They

hardly ever or sometimes read questions to know what to focus on while reading,

determined suitable strategies according to their reading purposes, scanned for keyinformation, skipped unimportant words, guessed meanings of new words in context

In short, the above researches mainly focus on the use of reading strategies of highschool and university students The results indicated that there were significantdifferences between good readers and bad readers in the frequency of strategy use

Moreover, both high school and university students had difficulties in choosing andapplying appropriate reading strategies while learning reading As for high schoolstudents, they also faced up with difficulties regarding vocabulary, grammaticalstructures, background knowledge and reading tasks.

All in all, it can be concluded that learning reading strategy is one of the effectivefactor in improving EFL reading comprehension proficiency The more reading strategiesreaders employed while reading, the better the comprehension What is more, it is theteacher’s responsibilities to motivate reading by selecting the appropriate materials andespecially for those at the early stages of learning

SUMMARY

In this chapter, the researcher has elaborately discussed the theoretical basis of thestudy by defining and clarifying the various aspects in the hope of providing an importantbackground for the discussion of the collected data later The following chapter willdisplay the methodology and findings of the research under the light of the above-mentioned theories

CHAPTER 2: THE METHODOLOGY

The previous chapter has provided a necessary theoretical background for thepresent study This chapter presents the methodology used for the data collection andanalysis in the study It starts with setting of the study and the description of theparticipants It then describes data collection instruments and analysis procedures of thestudy

2.1 An overview of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard

textbooks)

2.1.1 Objectives

The English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks) was written

by a group of lecturers of ULIS (VNU, Hanoi) and published in 2006 The syllabus of thetextbook “Tieng Anh 10” is the continuation of that of the textbooks at secondaryschools

According to the Ministry of Education and Training, by the end of the 10th formstudents are expected to achieve the following:

- Listen for the main ideas or for specific information of a monologue or a dialogue with the length of 120 - 150 words of the topics they have learnt

- Exchange information in English at a simple level about the situations relating to the topics they have learnt

- Comprehend passages of appropriately 190 - 230 words about the topics they have learnt

- Understand the main ideas of the text or understand the text in detail Develop

vocabulary comprehension: gap - filling, matching, etc

- Write paragraphs (of about 100 - 120 words) relating to the topics they have learnt according to a model or with prompts

It can be seen that although students have learnt English for many years (may besince secondary school); they come from different schools with different teachingmethods Therefore, their levels and proficiency also vary Additionally, in such context

of large class size and short period of time, it is likely that not all students can achieve thegoals, and there are differences between students

2.1.2 Content of the textbook

The English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” is designed under theme- based approachwith16 units covering six topics Topic one is “You and Me” consisting of unit 1 (A day

in the life of ), unit 2 (School talk) and unit 3 (People’s background) Topic 2 is about

“Education” which includes unit 4 (Special education), unit 5 (Technology and you), andunit 6 (An excursion) Topic 3 is “Community” comprising unit 7 (The mass media) andunit 8 (The story of my village) Topic 4 is about “Nature and Environment” (Unit 9 -Undersea world, 10 - Conservation, and 11 - National parks) The next topic is

“Recreation” (Unit 12 - Music, 13 - Films and cinema, 14 - The world cup) People andPlaces (Units 15 Cities, 16 Historical places)

There are five parts in each unit arranging in equal order as follows: Reading,Speaking, Listening, Writing, and Language focus Each part is carried out in a period (45minutes) The aim of the arrangement is to help students to practice four macro-skills asmuch as possible In addition, there is a “Test yourself” after every two or three units Theobjectives of the “Test yourself” is to examine how well students have achieved in theprevious units The “Test yourself” is constructed as follows: Listening, Reading,Grammar and Writing

Reading is the beginning part of each unit The aims of this is that through readingand through developing reading skills such as scanning, skimming, etc the students areprovided with language input Therefore, students can speak, listen and write about thethings relating to the theme in the next parts

Hence, it is essential for students to have good reading strategies to learn otherskills Due to the scope of the study, below are the characteristics of reading part in thetextbook

2.1.3 Characteristics of reading part in the textbook

In reading part, there is always a passage whose topic relates to other three skills

It is designed with three parts including “Before you read” (pre-reading), “While youread” (while-reading) and “After you read” (post-reading)

“Before you read” often gives questions with clear and beautiful pictures to lead inthe topic of the text In “While you read” (While - reading) of each unit, there are two or

three tasks with its own aim Students often have to scan for specific information andskim for general ideas By doing the tasks with such reading strategies, students can beable to enhance their reading skills “After you read” also provides useful activities forstudents and helps students revise what they have learnt from the passage.

Obviously, various topics in the reading texts are beneficial for readingcomprehension development However, sometimes students struggle to understand thereading texts because some passages have got new words and grammatical structures.Thus, in order to understand the reading passages, the teachers have to provide studentswith reading strategies, guidance, and support

In conclusion, reading part helps students improve mainly scanning and skimmingstrategies, so they haven’t learnt all of the reading strategies well

2.2 Objectives and method of the study

The research was carried out to investigate the current use of readingcomprehension strategies applied by the 10th form students in Pham Hong Thai highschool and find out how to enhance 10th form students’ reading comprehension.Therefore, the research was to seek answers to the following research questions:

1. What are reading strategies currently applied by 10 th form students in Pham Hong Thai high school?

2. How to improve 10 th form students’ reading comprehension?

To conduct this study, qualitative approach was employed The qualitative analysiswas employed mainly through the process of data collected from a written surveyquestionnaire delivered to 10th form students and an unstructured group interview with

10th form English teachers at Pham Hong Thai high school

2.3 The participants of the study

The participants of the study consisted of the tenth form students and the tenthform English teachers at PHT high school

2.3.1 Students

As for the students, the samples were 150 tenth form students from four classeschosen randomly as follow:

There are 13 classes of the tenth form students, and each class has approximately

35 students These 13 classes were arranged in ascending order from 1 to 13, then oneclass chosen after every 3 classes

There are some reasons for choosing these tenth form students as the participants

of this study Firstly, the training quality of these students is always of great concern toteachers at PHT high school The findings of the study would provide essentialinformation for teachers to improve PHT students' reading proficiency and hencecontribute to enhancing the overall training quality of these students Secondly, they aresuitable participants for the study because they have already finished the first semester inEnglish reading Their proficiency levels were generally reported to be betweenelementary and intermediate, which is of great concern towards the researcher to conductthe study on reading strategies In addition, these students are chosen randomly from fourclasses, it is feasible for the researcher to have favorable conditions to carry out all thesteps of the research process

2.3.2 Teachers

As regards the teachers, currently, there are five English teachers including theresearcher herself being in charge of teaching English to the 10th form students However,

to assure the objective opinions, only four teachers were chosen to be the participants All

of them are energetic and are willing to devote their time and energy to teaching.Additionally, all of them have much valuable experience of teaching (more than tenyears) Thus, they can be well-aware of students’ needs, their strengths and weaknesses aswell as their strategies in learning English reading skill They were interviewed to sharetheir opinions and experience on how to improve their students’ reading comprehension

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2.4 Instruments of data collection

The major instruments employed in this study are survey questionnaire forstudents and semi unstructured group interview for teachers

2.4.1 Questionnaire for students

Questionnaire is printed forms for data collection, which include questions orstatements to which the subject is expected to respond Questions can range from thosethat ask for yes-no responses or indication of frequency to less structured questionsasking respondents to describe or discuss language learning behavior in detail It isbelieved that surveys are the most commonly used descriptive method in educationalresearch There are a few advantages to use survey questionnaire as a research method

"The main attraction of questionnaires is their unprecedented efficiency in terms of (a)researcher time, (b) researcher effort, and (c) financial resources." (Zoltan Dornyei, 2003:9) Also, Selinger and Shohany (1989) pointed out the following advantages ofquestionnaires Firstly, they do not take so much time to administer as other procedures.Secondly, since the same questionnaire is given to all subjects at the same time, the dataare more uniform, standard and accurate Lastly, questionnaires can be easily quantifiedbecause multiple choice questions are used Because of these advantages, questionnaire isemployed as a main data collection method in this study

The questionnaire used in this study consisted of two main parts The first oneasked for the subjects’ background information including their ages, genders, the number

of years learning English, and their self-evaluated English proficiency levels The secondpart comprised of seven questions, in which two questions used 4 – point Likert scale tofigure out the students’ attitude toward reading comprehension and having good readingstrategies Two other questions are multiple choice ones which asked for students’purposes of learning reading and their difficulties in reading a text The next questionused 5 – point Likert scale to measure the participants' reading strategies and two lastquestions were open – ended ones seeking for their use of other reading strategies andtheir ideas about teachers’ action to help enhance their reading comprehension (SeeAppendix 1)

2.4.2 Unstructured group interview for teachers

Together with survey questionnaire for students, the researcher also employed anunstructured group interview for teachers as another source of data collection to assurethe validity and reliability of the data collected for the study As interviews areinteractive, the researcher can “elicit additional data if initial answers are vague,incomplete, off-topic or not specific enough” (Mackey and Grass, 2005:173)

It is noted that the interview was an unstructured interview seeking for theiropinion on how to enhance their students’ reading comprehension Additionally, thequestions were all open-ended, which encouraged the interviewees to expand upon theiranswers, clarify some issues; give more details or add additional perspectives around thetopic Additionally, the interview was tape-recorded and the important points throughoutthe interview were noted down, which was useful for later interpretation

2.5 Data collection procedures

The procedure of data collection consists of three main stages as follows:

Stage 1: In this stage, the survey questionnaire was constructed and editedcarefully After that, it was modified and piloted with some respondents to ensure thatboth of their content and structures could be suitable to the samples

Stage 2: The survey questionnaire for the students was administered by theresearcher in the classes The aim of this questionnaire was to figure out the currentsituation of reading comprehension strategies used by the samples The researcher brieflyintroduced her study, instructed them how to complete the survey questions (Vietnameseversion) and got trimmed to help them if needed in order to avoid misunderstanding andachieve the most accurate results

Stage 3: Then, the researcher contacted with four 10th form English teacher so as

to invite them to participate in the interviews It is noted that, all of respondents’ personalinformation were assured to be particularly kept confidential by the researcher

The interview with the tenth form English teachers was conducted after the data ofthe survey questionnaire were analyzed The purpose of this interview was to affirm the

results as well as to hold the teachers’ ideas of their students’ reading strategies in hope ofimprove the students’ current strategies and develop new ones Also, the researcher usedthe recorder to collect and keep needed information and data Similar to the surveyquestionnaire, the interviewer started to introduce her study, provide the brief explanation

of the format of the interview before recording it During the interview, the respondentswere encouraged to share their subjective opinions, experiences and give specificexamples so that in-depth information could be achieved

2.6 Data analysis procedures

The procedure of data analysis encompasses three main following stages:

Stage 1: After the survey questionnaire had been delivered to the participants, thereturned data was combined and cleaned before the analysis As for the open-endedquestions, the researcher wrote down the ideas that the respondents had given

Stage 2: In this stage, the data collected from the survey questionnaire was describedthrough pie charts and graphs, analyzed and synthesized

Stage 3: After being transcribed, relevant and important ideas collected from theinterview were analyzed and used as illustrations of the data analysis to answer theresearch questions

SUMMARY

In conclusion, this chapter has just discussed the methodology applied in thisstudy including the research design, the participants, the instruments and procedures ofdata collection and analysis It is severed as an important step to the next part whichspecifies results and discussions