Using authentic materials to improve reading comprehension of english majored student an experimental research project at a college in nam dinh

I have conducted an experimental research at a second year English majored class. The following are the findings achieved from the study and then displayed in my thesis: (1) the comparison between pretest and posttest scores of students from control group and experimental group emphasized better improvements in reading comprehension of students from experimental group after the exposure to authentic materials; (2) The interviews conducted with students from experimental group showed students’ preference towards authentic materials since they gave enormous benefits such as updated content, interesting writing style, various cultural values, knowledge about health and education all over the world, better reading comprehension, and cooperative skills with others; (3) Some difficulties were mentioned namely lack of background knowledge, new vocabulary, and unfamiliar writing style. Based on this, some suggestions were made to make best use of authentic materials, which consisted of choosing appropriate authentic texts, preteaching new words or providing related background knowledge

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01

HA NOI - 2020

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES *********************

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01

Supervisor : Nguyễn Thị Minh Trâm, PhD

HA NOI - 2020

DECLARATION

I, the undersigned, declare that this thesis is the result of my own research and has not been submitted to any other university of institution partially or wholly Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in text of the thesis

Hanoi, 2020 Student

Phạm Thị Hồng Hiếu

I also would like to thank all of the lecturers of the Department of Post Graduate Studies, Vietnam National University for their useful lectures and materials which are of great value to my thesis

Next, I want to show my appreciation for the responsible participation of thirty English majored students at Nam Dinh College of Education where I conducted this study In addition, a special word of thanks goes to all of my colleagues at Faculty

of Foreign Languages, Nam Dinh College of Education Without their contribution and support, I would not be able to complete this research

Last but not least, I owe my gratitude to my family for their support and encouragement

ABSTRACT

Based on teaching experience at Nam Dinh College of Education (NCE), the researcher has found that English majored students in our college seem to be bored with the reading texts in the course book and unmotivated to learn, and even lack vocabulary and background knowledge of real life Therefore, the present experimental research recruiting 30 second year English majored students at NCE was conducted to explore the effectiveness using authentic materials to improve the

students‟ reading comprehension They were then assigned to be an experimental

group and a control group (15 students per each) During the treatment of 8 weeks, the experimental group was exposed to authentic materials Pretest and posttest were conducted in a pair sample T-test as means to distinguish the difference of reading comprehension between the two groups Next, follow-up semi-structured interviews were carried out with 15 students from experimental group to investigate their satisfaction level toward the lesson as well as their difficulties in reading the authentic materials The study results emphasized the research hypothesis that authentic materials make significant improvement students‟ reading comprehension Consequently, the findings in this study result in some pedagogical implications for teachers and students to improve students‟ reading comprehension The research might be useful for English language teachers, students as well as researchers

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF GRAPHS AND FIGURES vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale for the study 1

2 Aim of the study and research hypothesis 2

3 Scope of the study 3

4 Method of the study 3

5 Significance of the study 4

6 Design of the study 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Overview of reading comprehension 6

2.1.1 Definitions of reading 6

2.1.2 Definitions of reading comprehension 7

2.1.3 Reading comprehension strategies/skills 8

2.2 Authentic materials 10

2.2.1 Definitions of authentic materials 10

2.2.2 Types of authentic materials 11

2.2.3 Benefits of authentic materials 13

2.2.4 Drawbacks of authentic materials 14

2.2.5 Criteria for selecting authentic materials 14

2.2.6 Stages of reading 15

2.3 Review of the previous related studies 16

2.4 Summary 18

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 20

3.1 The setting of the study 20

3.2 Research design 20

3.3 Restatement of the research hypothesis 20

3.4 Participants and sampling 21

3.5 Data collection instruments 21

3.5.1 Reading tests 21

3.5.2 Interviews 23

3.6 Data collection procedures 23

3.6.1 The reading tests 23

3.6.2 Interviews 25

3.7 Data analysis procedures 25

3.8 Summary 25

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 27

4.1 Tests 27

4.1.1 Results from pretest 27

4.1.2 Results from posttest 29

4.1.3 Comparison of the results between the control and experimental group 31

4.1.4 Summary 33

4.2 Interview 34

4.2.1 Benefits of using authentic materials 34

4.2.2 Difficulties and suggestions when using authentic materials 38

4.3 Summary 40

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 42

5.1 Summary of major findings 42

5.2 Implications of the research 43

5.3 Limitations of the study 45

5.4 Suggestions for further studies 45

REFERENCES 47

APPENDICES I

APPENDIX 1: Reading materials IAPPENDIX 2: Suggested activities for using authentic materials VIAPPENDIX 3: Pretest VIIIAPPENDIX 4: Posttest XVAPPENDIX 5: Interview questions XXIIIAPPENDIX 6: The results of the control group‟s tests XXIVAPPENDIX 7: The results of the experimental group‟s test XXV

LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1 Descriptive statistics for pretest‟s results 27Table 4.2 Descriptive Statistics of posttest‟s results 29Table 4.3 Paired Sample T-test for pretest and posttest results 33

LIST OF GRAPHS AND FIGURES

Graph 4.1 Pretest scores ………2Error! Bookmark not defined Graph 4.2 Posttest scores Error! Bookmark not defined Graph 4.3 Pretest and Posttest scores Error! Bookmark not defined.

Figure 4.1 Students‟ difficulties when reading authentic materials 38

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the study

Nowadays, globalization has become an essential part in the development of every country Together with this is the change in the status of English It is obvious that English is the most widely-used language all over the world since it appears in all fields of life Therefore, it is not surprising that English is considered international or global language, in which reading comprehension is one of the most important factors in English language learning for all students because it is the basis

of instruction in all aspects of language learning (Mikulecky, 2008) Particularly, the ability to read efficientlyiscritical for successful academic pursuit among students (Alvermann, 2002; Bernhardt, 2011; Grabe, 2010) As asserted by Guthrie (2004),reading isthe window to all knowledge In other words, reading isthe most important skill to master out of the four skills in a second language (Alvermann & Earle, 2003; Bernhardt, 2011)

Reading is one of the most important aspects of most English language teaching programs, but it can also be one of the toughest for teachers and students Preparing for, understanding and assessing reading can all be a challenge Nevertheless, it has been found in previous studies that the application of authentic materials in reading process is considered one of the most effective ways to widen students‟ reading ability and their knowledge of real life Nuttall (1996) commented that authentic-based materials can be motivating because they are proof that the language is used for real-life purpose by real people The difference is not in the language materials themselves but rather on their outcomes and their effectiveness

Learners feel that they are learning a target language as it is used outside the classroom Authentic materials contain topics of interest to students and encourage reading for pleasure, and they are practical and real because they provide valid linguistic data (Martinez, 2002; Peacock, 1997) Berardo (2006) stated that

“authentic materials enable learners to interact with the real language and content

rather than the form” In other words, authentic materials are undoubtedly an efficient tool in reading lessons because they capture the interest and they stimulate the imagination of students so that they will be more motivated to learn

Vietnamese learners, in English classrooms, tend to be bored at reading lessons With five years of teaching experience at Nam Dinh College of Education

(NCE), the researcher has found that both teachers and the English majored students

are facing some problematic troubles in her context Firstly, they are not provided with various sources such as extra books, newspapers, magazines, and CDs by the library Yet, they are inactive to take any initiative to locate foreign language resources or to seek for solutions to the problem As a result, the language input, students receive is mostly from the course books in the classroom so they find it difficult to express their opinion due to the lack of vocabulary and background knowledge of real life Moreover, during classroom lessons, they seem to be bored with the reading texts in the course book and unmotivated in learning Many course books have been used for such a long time that the content in these books seem to

be out-of-date or even not accurate in the current society Realizing the issues, the researcher thinks that it is crucial to provide alternative sources of reading other than course book to help the students acquire better reading comprehension by using a variety of authentic texts relating to the course topics

From the facts mentioned above, the researcher thinks that it may be necessary for English teachers to integrate authentic materials in the teaching reading process

at class Therefore, with the approval from Faculty and participants, the author is motivated to conduct an experimental research to investigate the effectiveness of authentic materials applied directly at class on the development of students‟ reading comprehension

2 Aim of the study and research hypothesis

The study aims at investigating the effectiveness of the authentic materials on developing second-year English majored students‟ reading comprehension

Therefore, the hypothesis is: Students who are supplied with authentic materials

make better results at reading comprehension than other students

Based on the above aim, the research involves two main objectives First, it investigates the differences in the performances between the control group and the experimental group by the comparison of pretest and posttest‟s results Therefore, the research brings about an objective result about the effectiveness of authentic materials Second, with in-depth interviews, the researcher not only explores students‟ attitudes towards authentic materials but also understands their motivations as well as their difficulties when using authentic materials

3 Scope of the study

The current experimental research is carried out to investigate only the effectiveness of authentic materials on English majored students‟ reading comprehension Other reading skills are out of the scope of the study Second, the sources of authentic materials used in this research are mainly selected from trustworthy online websites of appropriate difficulty and topics Third, the reading course focuses on developing pre-intermediate level for students who are 2nd year English majored students at the third semester Consequently, the materials of other

level of difficulty are outside the scope of inquiry

4 Method of the study

Experimental research with two groups: control and experimental group was conducted The data collection instruments included pre-test, post-test, and in-depth semi-structured interviews The pre-test and post-test had the same structures which are comprised of five tasks Each task was a typical form of a reading test and to check different reading comprehension skills The results of pre-test and post-test were compared between two groups in a pair sample T-test to check students‟ improvement after the treatment Additionally, semi-structured interviews including five questions were carried out with the participation of all students in the experimental group The purpose of the interviews was to explore the benefits of using authentic materials, the difficulties of students when reading authentic materials and ask for suggestions for future use

5 Significance of the study

The findings of this study may provide the teachers and learners with a useful case of authentic material application in improving students‟ reading comprehension Hopefully, the outcomes of this research might be a useful reference for teachers to understand more about the benefits of authentic materials Theoretically, the research can emphasize the importance of authentic materials in developing students‟ reading comprehension because they bring learners updated content, interesting writing styles, various cultural values, knowledge, better reading comprehension, and cooperative skills with others Practically, the research hopefully makes some suggestions about choosing and applying authentic materials

It is important to select materials that are suitable for the average of students‟ ability Besides that, teachers can give instructions and recommendations to help students understand the texts better Furthermore, the emphasis of teaching should

be laid on verbal interactions among students, on the initiation of real-life like communication situations, on the use of techniques, as well as the use of authentic materials Importantly, this study is expected to serve as a reliable and helpful source for other researchers who share the same interest in the topic and to throw new light on integrating new language teaching methods

6 Design of the study

This study consists of five chapters:

Chapter 1 is the introduction In this part, the researcher gives an overview of the research in which the author presents the rationale of the study, the aim of the study, research hypothesis, methods of study, scope of the study as well as the significance of the study and design of the study

Chapter 2 is the literature review which provides an overview of the theoretical background of learning reading comprehension, authentic materials in second language acquisition, and the related previous studies

Chapter 3, the methodology deals with the methodological frame work for the study It restates the research hypothesis and describes the setting, the participants, and the research methods of the study

Chapter 4 is the findings and discussion The findings from the tests and interviews will also be showed, discussed, and the recommendations are proposed Chapter 5 is the conclusion In this part, the researcher will provide the summary of the findings, contribution of this research and its limitations together with some suggestions for further studies

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Overview of reading comprehension

2.1.1 Definitions of reading

Identifying reading is often connected with the process of reading itself It is the cooperation which is normally silent, internal and private between the reader and the text (Alderson, 2000, p.3), which means that reading is comprised of multiple components involved Specifically, the writer, the text, and the reader are three essential ones during those processes since it is about how people make sense

of the written text so as to accomplish knowledge and understand author‟s messages

In addition, Goodman (1971) provides a more detailed definition, in which reading is “a psychological process by which the reader, the language user, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display”, and the act of reconstruction is viewed as “a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing and confirming.” Both William (1984) and Nutall (1996) claim that reading is the “understanding what has been written”, and it is the

“act of reconstruction.”

Similarly, Anderson (1985) also shared that reading is a process of constructing meaning from written texts It is a complex skill which requires the coordination of a number of interrelated sources of information This means that readers are required to mobilize both their background knowledge and practical experiences to apply during the process of reading to acquire the best comprehension

Furthermore, reading, which is considered as the most important academic skill in the educational process (Roundy and Roundy, 2009), is a complex structure involving many diverse processes including seeing, perceiving, vocalizing and interpretation In other words, reading asks students to integrate numerous skills to make out the text thoroughly, not simply only reading word by word by eyes

Regarding the aim of reading, Spratt, Pulverness and William (2005) indicate that the aim of reading is to make sense of the texts, which consists of understanding letter, word and sentence level, also activating the background knowledge (p.21) The readers need to base on their predictions, intelligence and experiences to see the text‟s overall purposes and interpret the writers‟ intention (Nuttall, 2000, p.16) Therefore, when readers deal with a text, they should understand what the letters are, how the letters combine to build a word, and what the meaning of the word combination is, then they can understand the sentence In fact, they can call their past experience or background knowledge to help them interpret the meaning of the text Here, rather than the text is at the heart of reading process, the readers become an active participant in which their background knowledge plays an important role in reading process

To summarize, reading is not simply a receptive process of gathering information by word per word, but an active process with the participation of the writer, reader and the text as well

2.1.2 Definitions of reading comprehension

Reading comprehension is undoubtedly the process of making meaning from the given texts The aim is to acquire an overall understanding of what is said or implied in the text rather than to get the meaning of the isolated words or sentences Various definitions of reading comprehension have been available over the years The overriding aim of reading is to get the correct message from a text; the message the writer intended for the reader to receive (Nuttall, 2000, p.4) The idea

of reading has been changed and moved from what was considered a receptive process, as Harmer (2001) says that it is how people identify meaning from the text,

to what is now said as an interactive process This condition can cause misunderstanding by the reader, except the reader can comprehend the text well because both the reader and writer depend on one another (Nuttall, 2000, p.11) According to Klinger, Vaughn and Broadman (2007), reading comprehension

is a process of interaction between readers and what they bring to the text, such as their prior or background knowledge and strategy use (p.8) This process also

includes the variables related to the text, for example the readers „interest of the texts and their understanding of the genres of the texts It means that what the readers learn and how they respond and comprehend the text is individualistic The process of constructing meaning depends on the individual competencies, such as experience and how to interpret the text

As said before that reading comprehension is considered as a complex process, Irwin (1991) cited in Klingner, Vaughn and Broadman (2007) proposed five basic comprehension processes which work together simultaneously and complement one another (pp 9-11) They are micro processes (the ability to remember detailed idea

of a text that carries meaning), integrative processes (understanding and inferring the relationships among clauses to make connection across sentences), macro processes (the ability to set up ideas in a coherent way), elaborative processes (connecting information provided in the text to the prior or background knowledge), and metacognitive processes (the conscious awareness or control of cognitive process)

To sum up, reading comprehension starts from the small unit of text which is words, then phrases, clauses, sentences until texts The comprehension depends on the ability of the reader to draw meaning from the printed words to interpreting the information appropriately It may include the variable of text, such as vocabulary, syntax, and grammatical and the variable of the reader namely the background knowledge, cognitive development, strategy use, interest and purpose

2.1.3 Reading comprehension strategies/skills

Reading in teaching and learning process is categorized as receptive skill which is defined by Harmer (2001) as “the way in which people extract meaning from the discourse” (p.199) Therefore, the readers do not need to produce any language while reading, they play a role as the receivers, the ones who receive the message of the text and get to understand it In a reading lesson, the language is used to derive messages from texts, or in reading lesson, the concentration of using language is not merely on the vocabulary or structure and the meaning of the text

become subordinate (Nuttall, 2000, p.30) In reading lesson, the meaning is central and any language item learnt is incidental benefit and therefore, the students have good strategies to comprehend texts while there are various types of written text Specifically, several types of reading may occur which are classified into oral and silent reading comprehension (Brown, 2001, p.12) Oral reading is occasionally for beginner and intermediate levels because it is aimed to check pronunciation and bottom-up processing skill, while silent reading is for advanced level of students because it is a very authentic activity Within the category of silent reading, it may also be categorized into intensive and extensive reading Intensive reading focuses

on linguistic or semantic details on a text and also be content – related reading because of subject – matter difficulty In intensive reading, reader will read with concentration and a great care to the text to understand the exact meaning of it Unlike intensive reading, extensive reading is aimed to achieve general understanding

in reading longer texts It often becomes a pleasure reading and reading technical, scientific or professional materials This type of reading may involve two specific reading skills, scanning for details and skimming for the essential meaning to provide global or general meaning of the text

In addition, to get a good idea of what strategies need to cover in the reading comprehension, the readers need a checklist of micro- and macroskills for reading comprehension Brown (2004) has formulated microskills for reading comprehension into: 1) Discriminate among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic patterns of English 2) Retain chunks of language of different lengths

in short-term memory 3) Process writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose 4) Recognize a core of words, and interpret word order patterns and their significance 5) Recognize grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc), systems (e.g tense, agreement, and pluralization), pattern, rules, and elliptical forms 6) Recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms 7) Recognize cohesive devices in written discourse and their role in signaling the relationship between and around clauses

Meanwhile, the macroskills are, 1) Recognize the rhetorical forms of written discourse and their role in significance for interpretation 2) Recognize the communicative functions of written texts, according to form and purpose 3) Infer context that is not explicit by using background knowledge 4) Infer links and connections between events, ideas, etc, deduce causes and effects, and detect such relationships as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification 5) Distinguish between literal and implied meanings 6) Detect culturally specific reference and interpret them in a context of the appropriate cultural schemata 7) Develop and use a battery of reading strategies such as scanning and skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning

of words form context, and activating schemata for the interpretation of texts To summarize, although each strategy has a different function, it is important that students integrate these strategies flexibly basing on the content and the tasks

In brief, readers can use many strategies to comprehend texts Those strategies depend on the readers‟ needs and what skills they need to cope

2.2 Authentic materials

2.2.1 Definitions of authentic materials

Thanks to the rise of communicative approach, the application of authentic materials in language learning has received great concern and high evaluation The goal of that approach is to develop communicative competence in a real life The definitions of authentic materials written by different researchers of language are slightly different in literature

Explain this, Stubbs (1996) identifies authentic texts as “actual, attested, and have real authentic instances of use”

According to Peacock (1997), authentic materials are “…materials that have been produced to fulfill some social purpose in the language community.” In contrast to non-authentic texts that are especially designed for language learning purposes

In addition, Nunan (1999) defines authentic materials as “spoken or written language data that has been produced in the course of genuine communication and not specifically for purposes of language teaching” Harmer‟s definition of authentic materials is the same as Nunan‟s He states that authentic texts are designed from native speakers; they are real text, designed not for language learners but for the speakers of the language (Harmer, 1991) Similarly, Wallace suggests that authentic texts have been defined as “…real-life texts, not written for pedagogic purposes” (Wallace, 1992) Therefore, authentic materials are written for native speakers and contain “real” language

Both Gilmore‟s definition of authentic materials (2007) and Morrow‟s (1977,

as cited in Gilmore, 2007) claim that authentic materials contain “real language” produced by a real speaker or writer for a real audience and designed to convey a real message of some sort The texts generally produced by native speakers could be comprehended rather effortlessly by native speakers

In conclusion, the working definition of authentic materials used in the present research adopts Morrow (1977, as cited in Gilmore, 2007), which considers authentic materials any kinds of text which convey a comprehensible message to the reader and makes him/her (re)construct meaning in a natural way Therefore, the authentic texts that are chosen should contain “real language”, which is real communication

2.2.2 Types of authentic materials

Based on the definitions above, the distinctive characteristics of authentic materials can be realized, which is real language, produced by real speakers or writer In this sense, a great number of authentic materials in our life are available such as newspaper and magazine articles, TV and radio broadcast, daily conversations, meetings, documents, speech, and films However, in the era of modern technology nowadays, the Internet can be the best choice for authentic materials In comparison to newspapers and other materials which may date very quickly, the Internet is continuously updated, more visually stimulating as well as

interactive Geoffrey (2010) classifies authentic materials into three categories namely audio, visual, and printed materials

Audio materials include those that learners can listen to These can be grouped into three First group is television programming including commercials, quiz shows, interactive talk shows, cartoons, news, and weather forecast reports The second group is comprised of radio programming which includes interviews, interactive talk shows, and radio advertisements The third group involves taped conversations, consisting of one-sided telephone conversations, meetings, short stories, poems and novels Functional writing texts that may benefit from these authentic materials include advertisements, dialogues, news articles, weather forecast reports, interview schedules, and agenda for meetings, minutes, short stories, plays, poems, and novels

Visual materials on the other hand are those that the learners can see These include photographs, paintings and drawings, children‟s artwork, wordless road signs, pictures from magazines, and wordless picture books Functional texts that can be illustrated by these materials include road signs, notices, directions, instructions, warnings, descriptions, expository texts, time tables, and X-ray reports The third type of authentic materials is the printed materials These include newspapers (articles, movie reviews, advertisements, astrology columns, sports reports, obituary columns, TV guides, recipes, directions, notices etc.), restaurant menus, directories, minutes of a meeting, memoranda, diaries, tourist information brochures and travel guides, greeting cards, letters, billboards, posters, bus schedules, and forms (medical history forms, application forms, tax forms, etc.) Production of such functional texts as newspaper articles, menus, directories, obituaries, bus schedules, and travel guides can be facilitated by the printed materials listed here

In the current research, articles from online source were used for experimental group to improve students‟ reading comprehension

2.2.3 Benefits of authentic materials

It is apparent that nowadays, English teachers have a wide variety of choices for teaching materials which are available and updated very quickly In order to choose them appropriately, the teachers should focus students‟ attention not only on vocabulary and grammar structures but prepare them for real communication where the knowledge of culture is sometimes crucial Thus the use of authentic materials can help to solve this problem

Henry Sweet made regular use of authentic texts in his books and was well aware of their potential advantages over pedagogy oriented materials: The great advantage of natural, idiomatic texts over artificial „methods‟ or „series‟ is that they

do justice to every feature of the language The artificial systems, however, tend

to cause incessant repetition of certain grammatical constructions, certain elements

of the vocabulary, certain combinations of words to the almost total exclusion of others which are equally, or perhaps even more, essential (Sweet, 1899)

In addition, authentic materials are also supposed to help students improve their comprehension in real situations by exposing them to real, though, difficult language, which are far different from that of simplified texts from textbooks Because authentic materials provide learners with real and also updated information, they are believed to provide learners another advantage of becoming a part of the language learning process (Murdoch, 1999)

In terms of writing and speaking skills, Savignon (1991) emphasizes the importance of authentic language data use in context in presenting both written and spoken materials Students will be provided with various kinds of language experiences from different language functions As a consequence, they will be stimulated to create their own modification of expressions In other words, they will acquire creativity in exploring the language from the exposure they attain

The literature above shows that using authentic materials is undoubtedly an effective teaching tool at ESL classes because they originate from real life, real context, rich in content and culturally significant Moreover, they raise students‟

interest in studying English because they help prepare learners for the „real‟ world of communication (Taylor, 1994)

2.2.4 Drawbacks of authentic materials

Despite the enormous advantages of authentic materials in language teaching,

it is undeniable that when applying them, teachers can face some issues According

to Dumitrescu (2000), because the wide range of contents and topics of authentic materials are not accompanied by textual aids, they might be too challenging and discouraging to some students Therefore, the materials can be used for the older age group, but for the younger age group they might be irrelevant, inaccurate, or inappropriate because of the unfamiliar words, phrases, and idioms He (2000) further states that in comparison to textbook-based materials, authentic materials require longer time frames and the designs are more complex

Some authors, such as William (1983 & 1984, Freeman and Holden (1986, and Morrison (1989, as cited in Peacock 1997) have acknowledged that students might be discouraged by authentic materials owing to their difficulty This argument is considerably reasonable, especially in terms of pragmatics and culture aspects, which means authentic materials may generally exceed the students‟ level

or prior knowledge In addition, Underwood (1989) asserts that authentic materials cannot be arranged before they are produced Therefore, it is important that teacher select the materials carefully so that they match well with the course books topics Considering these advantages and disadvantages of using authentic materials, the advantages surpass the disadvantages as long as teachers invest time and take thorough considerations to choose appropriate authentic materials to apply for reading lessons in class

2.2.5 Criteria for selecting authentic materials

Criteria for selecting authentic materials vary as scholars suggest different views on the issues A variety of authentic materials are available such as newspapers, magazines, the internet, and brochures One of the most useful sources

is the internet with wide ranges of sources provided and they are continuously

updated and also easy to access When selecting the authentic materials from the various sources, some criteria should be taken into consideration Nuttall (2000, as cited in Berardo 2006) gives three main criteria in choosing authentic materials to

be used in classroom

Suitability of content

The texts should not only be relevant to the students‟ needs but they also should be exciting and motivating Authentic materials which have been carelessly chosen can be extremely de-motivating for the students (Harmer, 2001, p.205)

Exploitability

This criteria involves the potentials of the texts In other words, the texts can

be used and exploited so as to increase the competence of the learners in the teaching and learning process When dealing with authentic materials, one should bear in mind that it should be done with a purpose, and particularly a clear pedagogic goal for what precisely the teacher wants the students to learn from the materials

Readability

Readability or the difficulty level of the texts refers to the appearance of new vocabulary and new structure contained in the texts Instead of increasing the students‟ motivation, the difficult texts can decrease the level of the students‟ confidence and lead to failure

Besides those criteria, Bernado (2006) also adds two more criteria in his study The first is variety, which are the various types of texts, which are used in the classroom in order to avoid the students‟ boredom Students are exposed flexibly to

a many types of authentic texts The second factor is presentation In other words, it

is about the attractive look of the texts The outlook of the texts plays an important role to draw students „attention

2.2.6 Reading stages

Bernardo (2006) gives possible solution which is to give text related tasks Three basic types of reading activities are as follows

Pre – reading: This activity is used to activate existing schemata or background

knowledge of the students It also provides information of linguistic or

social-cultural inadequacy to prepare students for reading the text

While – reading: It is used to encourage the students to be flexible and active

reader In addition, it promotes an interaction between reader and writer

Post – reading: This activity often comes as questions that follow a text, which is

used to test understanding

Furthermore, Nuttal (2000) recommends guidance that can be used at each of those three stages First, at the pre-reading stage, to make the lesson explicit and effective, teachers can provide a reason for reading, introduce the text, set a top-down task, break up the text, deal with new language, or ask signpost questions Then, in while-reading, the way to organize the class determines how the teacher can guide students while they are reading There are three broad modes of class organization which are the individual mode, teacher - centered class, group work or combination of those three modes The last is when reading has been completed There are many activities which can be done to reconsider the hypotheses made by the students in the early stages

In brief, when applying authentic materials in classroom, rather than simplifying and making the text less authentic, it can be made more approachable when it follows with appropriate tasks related to the texts and teacher pedagogic support through teacher‟s facilitation and interaction The reading tasks can be divided as pre, while and post reading activity to accompany the students so that they can make sense of the authentic materials more effectively

2.3 Review of the previous related studies

In this part, recent previous studies in both Vietnam and overseas on the use of authentic materials in improving students‟ reading comprehension will be reviewed All of these studies share a common purpose in discovering the effectiveness of using authentic materials in reading lessons and suggesting solutions

Many researchers have confirmed that using authentic materials will give students a number of benefits

After practicing teaching with authentic materials for more than a decade, Kelly, Kelly, Offner, and Vorland (2002) confirm that real-life materials energize the class and create positive feelings about learning They complement classroom teaching well The positive feelings can increase students‟ interest and create motivation for learning Floris (2008) points out the necessity for integrating authentic materials in the course design because they are more motivating, and engaging, and relevant to students‟ lives In other words, these studies have emphasized an important role of authentic materials as a motivation for students to learn When students are interested in learning, the outcome can be improved Those researches clarify the role of authentic materials as a motivation in language learning, but have not analyzed clearly their contribution in the improvement of students‟ language skills

Regarding reading skills, Cho and Ahn (2005) conducted a study on the effects of authentic text on narrow reading to improve the interest and reading ability of 37 fourth - grade Korean students, Krashen Their findings indicate that the students in the experimental group show improvements in their reading and vocabulary Moreover, the students also gain in their confidence and interest in reading Besides, the research proves the effectiveness of authentic materials in enhancing students‟ vocabulary Nevertheless, a drawback of this study is that it only investigates generally the improvement in reading without analyzing some detailed aspects of reading

In Vietnam, several researches on authentic materials have been carried out After giving 30 second year students at Thanh Do College of Technology authentic materials as supplementary materials for extensive reading for 8 weeks, Tran (2010) confirms that using authentic materials for the students to read extensively has improved students‟ reading comprehension and their attitude towards reading

Similarly, after using authentic materials for extensive reading to improve the reading proficiency for the 3rd year English major students at Hanoi

University of Industry, Hoang (2010) confirms the positive effects of extensive reading utilizing authentic materials on students‟ reading proficiency and their attitude toward reading However, although the author uses authentic materials as the materials for extensive reading, she does not review them in the literature and

no considerations for selecting materials were supposed

Based on the studies in both Vietnam and overseas, it can be summarized that authentic materials influences and stimulates students‟ reading motivation through more exposure of English language Specifically, through reading authentic materials, the students can also learn new vocabulary and culture While they learn, they can also experience the language in the real world beyond the classroom Despite the undoubted advantages of authentic materials, most of the previous studies only make use of authentic materials for extensive reading This remains a shortcoming that teachers cannot observe or control well the process that students learn from the materials

As a result, the researcher finds it significant to apply authentic materials directly during reading lessons Therefore, the researcher is motivated to conduct an experimental research to investigate the effectiveness of authentic materials on students‟ reading comprehension

2.4 Summary

readers learn and how they respond and comprehend the text is individualistic The process of constructing meaning depends on the individual competencies, such as experience and how to interpret the text In other words, reading comprehension is considered as a complex process Readers can use many strategies to comprehend texts Those strategies depend on the readers‟ needs and what skills they need to cope Thanks to the rise of communicative approach, the application of authentic materials in language learning has received great concern and high evaluation The literature above shows that using authentic materials is undoubtedly an effective teaching tool at ESL classes because they originate from real life, real context, rich

in content and culturally significant In order to overcome some drawbacks such as difficulty, new vocabulary, or structures, some criteria for selecting authentic materials were made such as suitability of content, exploitability, and readability ( Berardo, 2006) Based on the studies in both Vietnam and overseas, it can be summarized that authentic materials influences and stimulates students‟ reading motivation through more exposure of English language Specifically, through reading authentic materials, the students can also learn new vocabulary and culture While they learn, they can also experience the language in the real world beyond the classroom

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

3.1 The setting of the study

The study was conducted at Nam Dinh College of Education, which was founded more than fifty years ago and it is located in the west of Nam Dinh city Its main function is to train students to become primary and secondary teachers after graduation Each course lasts three years with six semesters and during that time; students have to take two internships at primary or secondary schools Each class consists of around thirty to forty students, most of whom are girls

The research was implemented at the second-year class of the third semester at Faculty of Foreign Languages Therefore, the authentic materials is applied for module Reading 3, which covers two credits and it is taught in ten weeks, two

periods each week Each period lasts fifty minutes The course book

“Interaction1-Reading” class by Elaine Kirn and Pamela Hartmann was used as materials for

teaching and learning at class After finishing the course, students are expected to get pre-intermediate level

3.2 Research design

The present study employs experimental research that collects both quantitative and qualitative data to investigate the effectiveness of using authentic materials on developing students‟ reading comprehension The quantitative data was clearly presented through the results of pretest and posttest In addition, the qualitative data from follow-up semi-structured interviews with students was obtained after the quantitative data collection to explore in-depth interpretations of the results

3.3 Restatement of the research hypothesis

The study is intended to investigate the effectiveness of the authentic materials

on developing second-year English majored students‟ reading comprehension The

hypothesis is: Students who are supplied with authentic materials make better

results at reading comprehension than other students The independent variable was

students using authentic materials for learning reading comprehension The dependent variable was the improvement of reading comprehension

3.4 Participants and sampling

The study was conducted with the participation of thirty second year English majored students from class English K38 of Nam Dinh College of Education All of them are female All the participants were from rural areas of Nam Dinh province aged from 19 to 20 years old Therefore, they should have the similar cultural background and social status The class was then assigned to an experimental group (group 38A) and a control group (class 38B) according to their result of pretest, 15 students per each After that, the experimental group was exposed to authentic materials for 8 weeks to improve experimental students‟ reading comprehension During the treatment, both groups received the same class instructions, only one difference was that the experimental students were delivered with authentic materials to read and do some exercises related at class The control one only studies the articles in the course book

3.5 Data collection instruments

In line with the objectives of the current study, two following research instruments namely reading tests and interviews were used

3.5.1 Reading tests

The instrument for data collection were two reading tests consisting of the pre-test and the post-test The purpose of the pretest and posttest was to compare the students‟ reading comprehension before and after the treatment and to know the effectiveness of authentic materials on students „reading comprehension Both of the tests had the same format and the students from two groups (experimental group and control group) took the same tests

There were five tasks in the test which were designed in line with course learning outcomes and the descriptive level of B1 according to CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001) Task 1, 2, and 3 were adapted from the Internet in condition that they satisfy B1 level according to CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001) The difficulty

level of the tasks was checked based on website Text Inspector (https://textinspector.com/) Task 1 was a True/False exercise True-False test items, also referred to as alternative-response questions, were used to assess a student's ability to determine whether a statement is correct with scanning skills Task 2 was about word form This task was to check students‟ lexical comprehension In task 3, students had to answer 10 multiple choice gap-filling questions The choices were created to meet the two criteria set by Wolf (1993): (a) all items are passage dependent, and (b) some of the items require the reader to make inferences In addition, a third condition was added: correct responses cannot be determined by looking at the other questions on the page For each of the 10 multiple-choice questions, four possible responses were created: one correct response and three distractors All distractors in the multiple choice questions were designed to be plausible (Bernhardt, 1991; Wolf, 1993), and all multiple-choice questions could be answered correctly without having read and understood relevant parts of the passages Task 4 and task 5 were designed basing on the format of Preliminary English Test (PET) Task 4 was about sign comprehension Students will be tested mostly on functional language and synonyms This task tested their ability to understand various short texts such as authentic notices and signs, packaging information and communicative messages In order to fulfill the task, it was important that students focus on the meaning of the words in the text, and then to try

to say what the words mean by paraphrasing or using their own words The last task was matching Students were required to read five descriptions and matched the content of a short text to each of the descriptions This required detailed reading comprehension of the descriptions and the texts This was to help students to establish the context of the text Having a global understanding of a text made it easier to read for detail, which is the next step Having read for gist and got a global understanding of the text, students can then be asked to read the questions in detail and underline key information This activity helps students focus on detail and to

read for detailed comprehension

3.5.2 Interviews

At the end of the course, the researcher carried out semi-structured interviews with students from experimental group to find out the students‟ preference towards the lesson as well as their difficulties in reading the authentic materials so that some necessary adjustments for the future could be made The length of each interview was around fifteen minutes and it was conducted in class after students had finished post-test Each interview consisted of five questions which required both open and close answers to ask about five different aspects of using authentic materials Question 1 was to ask about their favorite level towards the authentic materials Question 2 was a Yes/No question The researcher wanted to find out whether authentic materials help them to improve their reading comprehension The purpose

of question 3 was to clarify which reading comprehension skills they make best progress In question 4, the researcher expected students to share their difficulties in reading authentic materials in order that more suitable adjustments or adaptations could be made The last question was to ask for students‟ opinions about the implementation of authentic materials in the future All the answers were taken note

in paper

3.6 Data collection procedures

3.6.1 The reading tests

One week before the experiment, a pre- test was administered to both groups

In order to assure the equal level of both groups, the teacher put the mark of the pretest in order The students with odd number belonged to experimental group while those with even number belonged to control group Each group consisted of fifteen students

After that, the students in the experimental group (class 38A) were exposed to authentic materials to investigate the effectiveness of authentic materials on students‟ reading comprehension for eight weeks

Intervention: The reading materials

Eight online articles were selected by the researcher from trustworthy websites

It also can be from some blogs or advertisements, etc (See Appendix 1) The choice

of the text was based on every week‟s topic

The length of the texts was around six hundred to eight hundred words and they were at pre-intermediate level or B1 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Council of English, 2001) In order to check whether the authentic texts have equivalent level of difficulty, the author used the website https://textinspector.com/ Text Inspector has joined with Cambridge University Press to produce a tool for analyzing users‟ texts in terms of the English Vocabulary Profile (EVP), part of the English Profile project This website allows its user to identify the level of each word, phrase, idiom and collocation found in the text according to the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) on a scale of A1-C2 and, therefore, improve both ESOL teaching and learning A detailed analysis can be illustrated as follows

During the treatment, the researcher delivered one article to the students every week and asks students to do tasks designed before The tasks are divided into pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading The activities related to the authentic materials take around thirty to forty minutes (See Appendix 2)

At the end of the treatment, a post-test was given to students in both control

and experimental groups to assess the effectiveness of authentic materials on the improvement of reading comprehension

3.6.2 Interviews

At the end of the course, after the post-test, in-depth interviews were carried out with students from experimental group by the researcher The length of each interview was around fifteen minutes and the students were interviewed face-t-face individually in-class The interviews were conducted in Vietnamese so that interviewees could express themselves freely and were not limited by English levels Each student had to answer five main questions and all the answers were taken note by the researcher during the interviews Besides that, the researcher also asked more related questions so as to get detailed information All interviews were recorded with the approval from participants in order to support the qualitative data analysis afterwards

3.7 Data analysis procedures

After the collection of the tests, the test results are analyzed using SPSS version 22 with the application of descriptive analysis and Paired Sample T-test The data collected from interview transcripts was analyzed qualitatively using qualitative data analysis techniques suggested by Miles and Huberman (1992) The technique‟s steps were data reduction, data display, interpretation and conclusion drawing Any parts of the transcripts that were not relevant to the topic of authentic materials were set aside Afterwards, the remaining data from Vietnamese – version transcriptions were translated into English for quotations in the presentation of findings The data was coded according to themes and the results were presented to emphasize the hypothesis The integration of both quantitative and qualitative data helps the researcher have a more accurate and deeper interpretation of results

3.8 Summary

The present study employs experimental research that collects both

quantitative and qualitative data to investigate the effectiveness of using authentic materials on developing students‟ reading comprehension Thirty second year

English majored students were assigned to an experimental group and a control group Two research instruments namely reading tests and interviews were used The comparison of pretest and posttest‟s results helps to investigate the differences

in the performances between the control group and the experimental group Therefore, the research brings about an objective result about the effectiveness of authentic materials Second, with in-depth interviews, the researcher not only explores students‟ attitudes towards authentic materials but also understands their motivations as well as their difficulties when using authentic materials

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Tests

4.1.1 Results from pretest

As mentioned previously, the results of the pretest were used in order to access students‟ reading comprehension and to check the homogeneity at the beginning of the study Basing on the results of the pretest, the researcher could divide class into control group and experimental group The results of the pretest are presented as

The table 4.1 shows that the control group‟s mean is 5.667 whereas the mean

of the experimental group is 5.467 Therefore, it can be inferred that most students

of both of groups got mark 5.0 or 6.0 for their pretest The minimum and maximum scores of the two groups were the same (4 and 8 respectively) Moreover, the range

of the scores was also similar There was a slightly difference in standard deviation (1.2344 and 1.2459) The standard deviation of the experimental group was at higher level of homogeneity However, this violation will have little effect on the results as both groups are equal in size The analysis for mean, maximum and minimum scores and standard deviation shows that students of both groups perform similarly in the pretest

The detailed information of pretest‟s scores will be presented in the following bar chart The marks are divided into four groups: under-average (mark 4), average (mark 5 and mark 6), fair (mark 7), and good (mark 8 and mark 9)

Graph 4.1

Pretest scores

The graph 4.1 shows statistical comparison between two groups‟ scores Three students at the control group got under-average mark (20%), while the number of under-average mark at the experimental group is 4 (26.7%) Both of the two groups got the same number of average marks with eight students, which accounts for 53.3% For fair mark, three students (20%) at the control group got mark 7 while only two students at the experimental group did (13.3%) The lowest rate belongs to good marks Both groups only contained one student with good mark (6.7%)

Based on the above statistics, it can be inferred that the control students performed slightly better in the pretest than the experimental students Task 5 (matching) was obviously the most difficult task Many students could not match any items This means that students were weak at focusing on details and reading for detailed comprehension Similarly, many students gave incorrect answers to task

4 – understanding signs In other words, before the experiment, students were not familiar with the short authentic text or communicative messages In task 1

true/false, only two students gave eight correct answers Nearly half of the class only got four or five correct answers Task 2 about word form was not good at all

Most students only gave answer for “novelists, financial, willingness” No students gave correct answer for “publicity” and “consideration” For task 3, no students found the appropriate answer for the question 7 “quarrel” and few correct answers

were given to question 11 “remembered”

From the evidences above, it can be concluded that there were no significant differences in the pretests‟ results of the two group and also, most students only got under-average or average marks in control group and experimental group (73.3% and 80% respectively) In other words, most students had a relatively bad performance in reading comprehension As a result, it is urgent that the teacher as the researcher find suitable solutions for this problem and investigate whether the application of authentic materials in the reading lessons brought about positive effects, the results of posttests supported the hypothesis

4.1.2 Results from posttest

The results of the posttest were used to confirm whether the hypothesis is supported The descriptive statistics of the posttest for the two groups are presented

in the following table

experimental group is 6.8; whereas that of the control is 6.267 In comparison with the means in pretest, both the means of two groups are higher In addition, it can be inferred that most students in experimental group get mark 7.0 while the marks of the control group range around 6.0 Moreover, both the minimum and maximum scores gained by the control group is one point lower than those got by the experimental It indicates that the students of the experimental group made more improvement in their reading comprehension than the control group‟s students For instance, most experimental students gave the 80 % correct answers for task 1, while most students in the control group only fulfilled 60-70% In addition, in task

2, no correct answer is given to question 4 “failure” by the control group, but eight experimental students could do it For the next part, the experimental students showed better performance when four of them got all correct answers while only two members in the control group were successful In task 4, it was significant that five students in the experimental groups understood exactly all seven signs Moreover, most students in the experimental group could give correct answers for five or six signs while in the control group, the average is only three or four signs

In the last part, two students in the experimental group matched all correctly while all students in the control group did them incorrectly

Additionally, many students at the experimental group showed more significant improvement For example, two students only got 4 at pretest However,

at posttest, they got 6 Especially, the mark of one student rose from 4 at pretest to 7

at posttest, which is a persuasive evidence for students „improvement One student also got 2 points higher from 7 to 9 Generally, all students at experimental group got higher marks, except one student remained at both pretest and posttest On the contrary, at the control group, five students got no higher or lower marks, which were the same as the results at pretest; one student even got a lower mark, from 6 down to 5

Graph 4.2 below illustrates the posttest scores of the two groups

Graph 4.2

Posttest scores

From the graph, at the end of the treatment, no under-average mark appeared

at the experimental group, however, the control group still remained one student with under-average mark (6.7%) Similarly, the average mark of control group remained the same as at the pretest with eight students (53.3%) while the number at the experimental group is only six students (40%) On the contrary, experimental group got higher rates for both fair and good marks with five students of fair mark and four students of good mark, which totally account 60 % In the control group, three students got fair mark and three students got good mark, which is only 40% in total Furthermore, there is one student in experimental group getting mark 9, which

is an outstanding result and a persuasive evidence for students‟ progress From these descriptions, it is obvious that the experimental group has improved their reading comprehension more than the control group

4.1.3 Comparison of the results between the control and experimental group

To measure if there is significant improvement within groups, comparison between pretest and posttest scores of the two groups is made as follows