The effects of pre reading on students reading comprehension at chợ lạch a high school in ben tre province

LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Summary of the research design Table 3.2: Numbers of participants Table 4.1: Effectiveness of textbook activities Table 4.2: Provision of background knowledge

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HO CHI MINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

- -

Student: DANG THE NHU

THE EFFECTS OF PRE-READING ACTIVITIES ON STUDENTS’ READING

SCHOOL IN BẾN TRE PROVINCE

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL)

Supervisor

Dr LE THI ANH PHUONG

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:

THE EFFECTS OF PRE-READING ACTIVITIES ON STUDENTS’

READING COMPREHENSION AT "CHO LACH A" HIGH

SCHOOL IN BEN TRE PROVINCE

In terms of the statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’ Program issued by the Higher Degree Committee, the thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree

Ho Chi Minh City,

Dang The Nhu

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, Dang The Nhu, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library

In terms of these conventions, I agree that the original of my thesis

deposited in the Library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan or reproduction of the theses

Ho Chi Minh City,

Dang The Nhu

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, my deepest gratitude was expressed to Dr Le Thi Anh Phuong, my supervisor, for her encouragement and kind support for my thesis I highly appreciate her valuable insights in her feedback to me and

I am so grateful for all her guidance, and confidence in my ability to accomplish this thesis

I would also like to express my sincere thanks to all the instructors who have been taught TESOL 08 class for their teaching

I am especially grateful to my beloved family, I would like to thank my mother, Mrs Pham Thi My Hoa for her patience and support given to me during the time I did this thesis, two of my sisters for their enthusiasm and good care for my newly-born baby so that I could have the time to do this research, my husband and my brother for their support and help

I would like to express my thanks to all my classmates at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities for their constant assistance and support while I was studying at this University

My sincere thanks go to all of the students and English staff who

participated in this research for their kindness and willingness to help me overcome difficulties in doing this thesis at "Cho Lach A" high school

ABSTRACT

This thesis investigates the effects of pre-reading activities on

students’ reading comprehension of grade 11 at "Cho Lach A" high school

in Ben Tre Province The thesis starts with students' perceptions about the current pre reading activities in English Grade 11 textbook Based on these findings, adaptations of these activities were made and tried out After that the effectiveness of the adapted activities was evaluated via the differences between the pre and post test scores in the reading tests taken by the

students, in addition to the questionnaire responses provided by the

students and the teachers Implications and recommendations for applying the adapted pre-reading activities to help solve these problems are

indicated

The data were collected from 85 students of two classes of grade 11,

in "Cho Lach A" high school in Ben Tre province, with one as control group and the other as experimental group The findings showed that students and teachers were generally in favor of pre-reading activities in the textbook in providing students with background knowledge and

information related to the readings These pre-reading activities in the textbook, nevertheless, were still limited in the number available, in their inadequate and small-sized pictures and difficult questions which were not motivating enough to help the students in improving their reading skills In addition, activities such as, discussion, pictorial contexts, matching and pre-questions were more popular to the students than guessing

The adaptation of pre reading activities was conducted in 6 sessions

of about 10 minutes with the Experimental group to find out students’

It seemed that adapted pre-reading activities were positively

perceived by the students They found these activities interesting and relevant to their personal experience, as reported in the questionnaires and journal data As shown in the experiment, the additional activities provided the students with more information about the readings, with the vocabulary and pictorial context activities more popular than brainstorming, guessing and semantic mapping Of note, pre-question and previewing seemed to be much less popular

The results of the adapted activities were encouraging as they

seemed helpful in improving the students' test scores

Based on the findings, implications and suggestions were given to improve the teaching of English, in particular reading comprehension at "Cho Lach A" school and in similar contexts in Vietnam

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of originality i

Retention and use of the thesis ii

Acknowledgements iii

Abstract iv

Table of contents vi

List of charts x

List of tables xi

Abbreviations xii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background 1

1.2 Problems in teaching and learning English 2

1.3 Research problems 4

1.4 Limitation 5

1.5 Hypotheses 5

1.6 Significance of the thesis 5

1.7 Definitions of terms 6

1.8 Organizations of the study 7

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 9

2.1 Importance of reading 9

2.2 Reading process 9

2.3 Importance of reading skills .10

2.4 Reading purposes 11

2.5 Approaches in teaching reading skill 12

2.5.2 Whole language approach 13

2.6 Stages in a reading lesson 15

2.6.1 Pre reading stage 15

2.6.2 While reading stage 17

2.6.3 Post reading stage 17

2.7 Pre-reading activities 18

2.7.1 Importance 18

2.7.2 Purposes .19

2.7.3 Types .20

2.7.3.1 Brainstorming 20

2.7.3.2 Previewing 21

2.7.3.3 Pre-questioning 21

2.7.3.4 Semantic mapping 23

2.7.3.5 Vocabulary activity 23

2.7.3.6 Pictorial contexts 24

2.7.3.7 Prediction 25

2.8 Principles in teaching pre-reading activities 25

2.9 Empirical studies 27

2.10 Role of textbooks .28

2.11 Textbook evaluation and adaptation 30

2.12 Summary 33

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY .34

3.1 Research questions 34

3.2 Research design 34

3.2.1 Subjects .38

3.2.2 Description of the textbook 39

3.2.3 Adapted activities 40

3.2.4 Description of data collection instruments 44

3.2.4.1 Journal .44

3.2.4.2 Questionnaires 44

3.2.4.3 Pre and post tests .46

3.2.5 Data collection procedures .46

3.2.6 Data analysis method 47

3.3 Summary 48

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND FINDINGS .49

4.1 Results and discussion 49

4.1.1 Participants’ perceptions about textbook activities 49

4.1.1.1 Effectiveness of these activities 49

4.1.1.2 Reasons 50

4.1.2 Participants’ perceptions about adapted activities .52

4.1.2.1 Usefulness of adapted activities 52

4.1.2.2 Effectiveness of adapted activities 56

4.1.2.3 Effects of adapted activities 58

4.1.3 Test results 59

4.1.3.1 Pre test scores 60

4.1.3.2 Post test scores 60

4.1.3.3 Pre test and post test comparison 61

4.1.4 Additional data 62

4.2 Main findings 64

4.3 Summary 65

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .66

5.1 Conclusions 66

5.2.1 Importance of pre reading activities .67

5.2.2 Limitations of textbooks 68

5.2.3 Textbook evaluation 68

5.2.4 Textbook adaptations 69

5.2.5 Teaching pre reading activities 69

5.3 Limitations of the study 71

5.4 Suggestions for further research 71

REFERENCES .72

APPENDICES 80

APPENDIX 1: TEXTBOOK AND ADAPTED ACTIVITIES 80

APPENDIX 2: EXAMPLES OF DIFFICULT QUESTIONS 83

APPENDIX 3: GROUP A’S TEST SCORES 84

APPENDIX 4: GROUP B’S TEST SCORES 86

APPENDIX 5: REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE AND VOCABULARY 88

APPENDIX 6: SUGGESTED ADAPTATIONS AND AUTHORS 90

APPENDIX 7: QUESTIONNAIRE 1 92

APPENDIX 8: QUESTIONNAIRE 2 97

APPENDIX 9: EFFECTS OF TEXTBOOK ACTIVITIES:REASONS 102 APPENDIX 10: EFFECTS OF ADAPTED ACTIVITIES 104

APPENDIX 11: JOURNALS 107

APPENDIX 12: PRE TEST 111

APPENDIX 13: POST TEST 117

APPENDIX 14: ADAPTED ACTIVITIES for “ENGLISH 11” 124

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 4.1: Usefulness of adapted pre-question activity Chart 4.2: Usefulness of adapted semantic mapping Chart 4.3: Usefulness of adapted guessing

Chart 4.4: Usefulness of adapted pictorial context Chart 4.5: Usefulness of adapted brainstorming Chart 4.6: Usefulness of adapted previewing

Chart 4.7: Usefulness of adapted vocabulary activity Chart 4.8: Group A’s score distribution

Chart 4.9: Group B’s score distribution

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Summary of the research design

Table 3.2: Numbers of participants

Table 4.1: Effectiveness of textbook activities

Table 4.2: Provision of background knowledge

Table 4.3: Provision of useful information about texts

Table 4.4: Small- sized pictures

Table 4.5: Few pictures

Table 4.6: Difficult questions

Table 4.7: Provision of vocabulary

Table 4.8: Effectiveness of adapted activities

Table 4.9: Usefulness of different types of textbook activities (group B) Table 4.10: Usefulness of different types of adapted activities (group B) Table 4.11: Motivation

Table 4.12: Purposeful reading

Table 4.13: Interest arousal

Table 4.14: Background knowledge activation

Table 4.15: Increase of class participation

Table 4.16: Provision of information

Table 4.17: Provision of vocabulary

Table 4.18: Help with text comprehension

Table 4.19: Pre test scores of Group A and Group B

Table 4.20: Post test scores of both groups

ABBREVIATIONS

CLAHS "Cho Lach A" high school

EFL English as a foreign language MOET Ministry of Education and Training

SS students

P page

Q question

42 classes of grades 10, 11, and 12, with each class of about 40 students With

28 classrooms, the school is considered to have some nice furniture where pairs of students sharing a fairly new table The classroom has a magnet

blackboard but there are no other teaching aids Only two cassette players can

be used for teaching English and three overhead projectors for the whole school One tenth (10/90) of the teachers in the school are teachers of English, each with a B.A in English, except for one with an M.A in English and

another one who is pursuing her studies for an M.A degree All these English teachers participate in training courses of English teaching methodology

every year by the Department of Education and Training of Ben Tre province Each English teacher teaches on average 24 periods a week, except for one who has to teach 29 periods a week Each year, teachers teach different

classes and they do not follow their previous classes Each teacher is expected

to pay 16 classrooms visits to other English classes and is required to have classroom visitors 4 times a year After finishing the classroom visit, there is a

feedback section where teachers discuss their experiences Teachers use the feedback to note down what worked well, what didn’t work well as well as giving suggestions to the teacher whose classes are observed

Most students buy an English textbook for each school year and some use second-hand textbooks with already filled-in answers This aspect

sometimes creates boredom with the tasks as students think they already

know the answers The students’ book is identical to teacher’s book except for

an additional teaching guide book

In addition, most of students at "Cho Lach A" high school come from poor peasants' families from different villages in the neighborhood of Cho Lach District and only some come from Cho Lach district where they can have a less difficult life

1.2 Problems in teaching and learning English

Teachers encounter various problems in teaching English For example, English was not obligatory in their entrance exam to senior high schools so students did not try hard for this subject Therefore, their English level tends

to be low Large classes of students with multi-levels of English make it

difficult for the teachers Also, most students who come from the countryside, have limited general knowledge and this makes it hard for them to know about issues such as Sources of Energy, the Asian Games, Space Conquest, and the Wonders of the World Despite the fact that they have learnt English presumably for 4 years in junior high schools, their English is still limited, compared to the textbook requirements Many of them have difficulty in

The English test in each semester follows the format required by Ministry

of Education and Training and it is written by one of the five teachers in

charge of teaching English in each grade

For grade 11, the 45 minute test consists of many aspects and is in form of multiple choice items (60 %) and re-writing (40 %) It would include

grammar (10%), vocabulary (15%) and pronunciation (10 %), as well as the

three skills of reading (20 %), writing (40 %) and speaking (5 %)

Students often have difficulties in a reading test which comprises two

reading passages and questions in the form of multiple choice, gap-filling or sometimes True/False exercises as students find reading challenging due to their limited vocabulary and general knowledge of related topics In addition, students think that reading comprehension means the translation of word by word, sentence by sentence into the source language

By providing students with a long list of new words beforehand in the

reading text, high school teachers believe that they can help their students

improve their reading comprehension Then they ask students to read the text

to do the tasks follow This way of teaching defined that students were not provided with information preparing for the reading text which caused them less motivated and interesting in approaching the reading

A big problem in teaching is that in their daily teaching of a reading lesson, teachers do not follow three stages of pre reading, while reading and post

reading stage They often omit pre reading stage, which is a key stage in getting the students to be prepared for the main content of the passage Students are not taught the skills of prediction or thinking Sometimes, teachers also skip the post reading stage which is essential in helping the students to make use of

what has been learnt from the passage and to expand it in real life so that they can remember the language and knowledge more easily

Teachers’ lack of stages in teaching, however, lead to students’ deficiency in preparing for them to connect the gap between old and new information in preceding reading stage and consolidating some pieces of information related to the text in the post stage As a result, teachers’ lack of pre reading stage or post reading stage demotivate students in learning reading skills

The school textbooks often include very few pre reading activities For example, in "English 11", there is often only one activity in the form of guiding questions (unit 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, etc) and a few related pictures (unit 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8,

15 and 16) However, guiding questions are very difficult to the students

Further information about this textbook is provided in Chapter 3

These difficulties led the researcher to adapt the pre reading activities in the textbooks and tried them out in her class with the hope to improve

students' reading skills, their test results and ultimately their motivation for learning English

1.3 Research questions

The research questions that guided the study were as follows:

1 What were students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the pre-reading activities

in the textbook?

2 How were these adapted activities perceived by the students?

3 Could well-designed pre-reading activities improve students' reading skills?

1.4 Limitations

This thesis was simply the researcher's initial attempt in trying to solve one problem in her teaching with grade 11 students at "Cho Lach A" high school The number of participants involved in this study was still small and the trial time was very short, only two months Therefore, the results and the implications acquired were still constrained to "Cho Lach A" high school Despite these shortcomings, the researcher hoped to shed some light into her teaching at "Cho Lach A" high school so that colleagues could relate it to their own teaching contexts

1.5 Hypotheses

The learners in the experimental group could improve their results in the post tests and they could find the adapted pre-reading activities useful in

enhancing their reading comprehension

1.6 Significance of the thesis

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions

Theoretically, this study was conducted to add information of reading process as well as reading skill and information on the effects of pre reading activities on students’ reading comprehension This thesis will help both teachers and students to get over such important deficiencies in the teaching and learning of reading comprehension It is expected to further achievement teaching English as a second language

Practically, reading is an important part of other skills in the English tests

in high schools Therefore, if the students have good reading skills, their test

results can significantly improved If the adapted pre-reading activities can be effective in helping the students in reading comprehension, the thesis could be very useful in increasing the students' motivation in learning English and the teachers could apply the experience in their own classrooms As a result, this investigation contributed to the improvement of teaching reading

comprehension at "Cho Lach A" high school

1.7 Definitions of terms

There are a number of key concepts used in this thesis and the

definitions of these concepts are provided in the following

1 Background knowledge: the knowledge of the world that the reader

utilizes in interpreting a piece of written language (Richard, 1992: 163),

including all experience that a reader brings to a text: life experiences,

educational experiences, knowledge of how texts can be organized

rhetorically (Anderson, 1999: 11)

2 Bottom-up processing: decoding the smallest elements (phonemes

and graphemes) first, and using these to decode and interpret words, clauses, sentences, and then whole texts (Nunan, 1999: 302)

3 Brainstorming: a process for developing creative solutions to

problems (Osborn, 1963)

4 Reading: a complex cognitive process in which reader and text

interact to (re)create meaningful discourse (Silberstein, 1994: 259) It is

aimed to master the total message of the writer, both main points and

those ideas This type of reading is the primary concern of most reading

classes (Long & Richards, 1987: 239)

5 Reading activities: suggested by the goals of the readers and by

specific characteristics of the reading passage Reading tasks must be realistic

in terms of both language use and students’ abilities (Silberstein, 1994:12)

6 Pre-reading: anticipating the content of a book or paper by scanning

the table of contents, chapter headings and sub-headings, opening and closing paragraphs in each section and by looking for key words or phrases,

summaries or conclusions

7 Previewing a text: gathering as much information about the text as

you can before you actually read it (Grellet, 1981: 59)

8 Pre-reading strategies: aimed to help students build up their

expectations and understandings about a text before they actually begin

reading it

9 Top-down processing: aimed to explain the use of background

knowledge, knowledge text structure, and/or knowledge of the world to assist

in the interpretation of discourse (Nunan, 1999: 316)

1.8 Organizations of the study

Chapter 1 presents the background and the purpose as well as the

significance of this study In addition, in this chapter, research questions are raised to achieve the objectives of this thesis

Chapter 2 is an overview of relevant related theoretical background of the topic and some issues arising from the topic Studies from other researchers of the same topic are also included

Chapter 3 is a detailed description of the research method, including the research instrument, design and method, as well as the instrument used to collect data, which is carefully analyzed in Chapter 4

Chapter 4 presents general results and major findings from the results Chapter 5 includes implications, recommendations as well as conclusion for this paper

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Importance of reading

Reading is important to all of us, especially in the modern world An immense amount of time, money, and effort is used for reading in elementary and secondary schools in the world (Nunan, 1999: 249) Reading is most important to professionals because it helps them to keep up-to-date in their fields (Baker-Gonzalez & Blau, 1995: xvi) and it serves as an important tool

in any professional field (Ibrahim, 2006)

2.2 Reading process

Since the 1980s, a number of advances have been made in research on reading Traditionally, reading is considered a "process of decoding written symbols into their aural equivalents in a linear fashion” (Nunan, 1999: 252) But Smith (1978 in Nunan, 1999: 253) believes that "reading is more than mechanically decoding” In this line, Stanovich (1980) argues that reading is a process of developing and testing hypotheses In addition, the

psycholinguistic model of reading proposed by Goodman’s (1967, in Long &

Richards: 1987, 219) has described reading as a “psycholinguistic guessing

game” which means “this act of the construction of sampling from the input

text, predicting, testing and confirming or revising those predictions, and sampling further” In another way, the readers do not use all of the textual cues, but the predictions

In recent years, reading is no longer viewed as decoding process, but is

an interactive process Many researches on this field have shown that reading

is a combination of both top-down processing, or knowledge-based or

conceptually driven, and bottom-up processing (Richards, 1990: 87) This

closely relates to the schemata theory, which means “comprehending a text is

an interactive process between the reader’s background knowledge and the text” (Long & Richards, 1987: 220) Harmer (1998: 288-289) argues that if students can bring their own feeling and knowledge to the task, rather than just responding to tasks set by other people, they can be more engaged in the text and thus can activate their schemata, and finally end up with a good reason to read This view is supported by Shrum and Glisan (2005: 162) who assert the importance of prior knowledge as a key factor in recalling what they read and inferring more logically concluding beginning language

learners Motivation in reading also helps with reading efficiency (Guthrie et al., 2004: 417, in Grabe, 2009: 181) In conclusion, reading is a highly

interactive process between themselves and their prior background

knowledge, on the one hand, and the text itself, on the other (Long &

Richards, 1987: 220)

2.3 Importance of reading skills

Reading, the mother of all study skills, is a basic tool of learning and one of the important skills in everyday life skill (Fry, 1977), and is one of the four language skills reading, writing, listening and speaking (Spratt et al., 2005: 21) Reading is the most important skill for most students of English throughout the world (Paulson & Bruder, 1976: 157) In language learning, many English learners consider reading one of their most important goals as it helps students to access new language and practice language they have

already learnt (Lindsay and Knight, 2006: 70); thus, it helps them with their language acquisition Reading also has a positive effect on student’s

knowledge, as well as their spelling and writing (Harmer, 2007) Moreover,

students because it is a major part of the learning process With the rate of change in the modern technological world, many people will be students for life, for reading to keep up-to-date in their fields or to learn about new fields Rivers (1981: 147) stated that “reading is the most important activity in any language class, not only as a source of information and a pleasurable activity, but also as a means of consolidating and extending one’s which are

knowledge of a language.”

English learners can read for information, for pleasure or for work (Richards & Renandya, 2002: 273)

2.4 Reading purposes

Reading texts can be used for several different purposes

(Cunningsworth: 1995) When students read, it is important that they have a clear purpose Purposeful reading saves time for students to spend on other study activities (Glendinning & Holmstrom, 2004: 6) Readers read for many reasons So far, there have been many authors such as Wallace (1992: 6-7), Grabe and Stoller (2002: 11), Lindsay and Knight (2006: 73) mention reading purposes in different perspectives Wallace (1992: 6-7) suggests three

purposes in reading, i.e., they are reading for survival, reading for learning, and reading for pleasure Lindsay and Knight also agree with Wallace’s point

of view, but replace the first two with for general meaning and for detail Moreover, Cunningsworth (1995: 73) divides into 6 purposes of reading, such

as, (a) developing reading skills and strategies; (b) presenting/recycling

grammar items; (c) extending vocabulary; (d) providing models for writing; (e) giving information of interest to students; (f) stimulating oral work Grabe and Stoller (2002: 11) refer to reading purposes more details in term of

following: to search for simple information, to skim quickly, to learn from the

texts, to integrate information, to write (or search for information needed for writing), to critique texts, and for general comprehension Rivers and

Temperly (1978:1987) also suggest reading purposes but in more details than Grabe and Stoller

Whatever purpose of reading is, it is beneficial to state a purpose for reading the given text when teaching a reading text The purpose of a reading task should be stated to the students before they read, e.g., for main idea, for specific information or for critical reading, etc (Forseth et al., 1994: 84) because reading can be conducted for a vast range of different purposes

(Flemming & Stevens, 1998: 55) In summary, teaching reading helps the students not only understand the text for that day, but also know how to read effectively (Forseth et al., 1994: 85)

2.5 Approaches in teaching reading skills

2.5.1 Phonics approach

Nuttall (1982: 76) defines that phonics is the relationship between sounds and spelling, particularly the regularities that help readers to identify words Paul (2003: 85-87) clarifies that phonics approach pays attention to the ways to learn phonic sounds and pronunciation rules and read by breaking words up into their component sounds; or to underlying patterns Phonics also views the way of rote learning, e.g., many rules, doing a lot of repetition; reading and writing sentences that have personal meanings This perspective

is the same as Nunan’s (1999: 252) view of reading in which learners are taught to decode words by matching written symbols with their aural

equivalents According to Nunan, the “bottom-up approach” views reading as

a process of decoding written symbols into their aural equivalents in a linear

meaning This is the procedure considered as the most popular approach of reading This would seem reasonable to teach students initial reading these sound-symbols correspondences

However, phonics has come in for a great deal of criticism for it

deemphasizes meaning in the process of reading According to Nunan (1999: 252) reading under the phonics approach would not be appropriate and logical impossibly Nuttall (1982: 77) negates phonics for it cannot help EFL learners

to identify new lexical items One of the articulate critics of the phonic

approach is Smith (1978 in Nunan, 1999) opposed to phonics because it is impossible to determine the sound represented by the word until one has read the entire word because of the relationship of sounds to letters in English requires too many rules, i.e., 166 rules, to which there are 661 exceptions (Jeffcoate, 1992:112) Nuttall (1996: 76) opposes phonics approach in a way that is no help in reading eye, where there is no correspondence between the letters and the sounds

In conclusion, Nunan (1999: 254) and Nuttall (1982: 77) state that a phonic approach in the early stages of reading is the most effective and

efficient way of teaching reading Students will find it more useful to

concentrate on meaning in context, rather than on pronunciation which results

in understanding as Nuttall (1982: 77) concludes

2.5.2 Whole language approach

Because of some criticisms of bottom-up models, Paul (2003: 85-87) suggests that whole-language approach focuses on learning language in a natural and meaningful context which words are learned by guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words from contexts or from hints In this case, words should be learned as complete words, and sentences as well as whole stories

with little analysis Whole-language approach is more suitable for native speakers for their excess of natural exposure to oral English which leads to passive attitude to reading than the latter which focuses on teaching not

stimulating students to learn But it can be a “wonderful tool for encouraging creativity and active learning”

In this line, Jeffcoate (1992: 112) similarly mentioned ‘language

experience’ approach or ‘whole language approach’ which shows the poor relationship between sound and symbol in English – forty-four phonemes to

be represented by twenty-six letters In one word, teaching reading should be integrated into all-round of language development Smith (in Nunan, 1999: 253) purported a “psycholinguistic” approach, defined as “top-down”

approach to reading Thus, reading teachers should start this approach with a set of hypotheses then selectively samples the text to determine whether or not the predictions are correct As a matter of fact, reading is viewed as a constructing meaning process not a decoding form and the reader only resorts

to decoding if other means fail

However, Stanovich (1980, in Nunan, 1999: 253) opposes to whole language approach He argues that “if reading were a process of developing and testing hypotheses, then reading would actually take longer than the decoding approach In conclusion, Nunan (1999: 254) states that reading is an interactive approach, in which the reader constantly shuttles between bottom-

up and top-down processes

Anderson (1999) claims that “many teachers now accept the view that reading is the result of a two way communication between the reader and the text, achieved through simultaneous processing (which involves word

(which involves skills like predication, inference etc.) In summarizing, both top-down and bottom-up approaches to text are valuable, and use each as appropriate (Nuttall, 1982: 125)

2.6 Stages in a reading lesson

To help improve reading, to make reading more realistic and interesting (Davies & Pearse, 2000: 92), a lesson is planned in three stages: before-

reading stage, during reading stage, and after-reading stage (Doff, 1988; Baker and Westrup, 2000: 63; Celce-Murcia, 2001; Lindsay and Knight:

2006, 74-76)

2.6.1 Pre reading stage

As one of the three stages in teaching a reading lesson, pre-reading stage focuses on activating prior knowledge of vocabulary or concepts (Blass

& Whalley, 2006; Tierney & Readance, 2000), it is to prepare learners for what they are going to read, just as we are usually prepared in real life as pointed out by Davies & Pearse (2000:92) Therefore, according to Doff (1988: 170) pre reading stage helps students have some ideas of what they are going to read about, for example, they can have some questions or make a number of predictions Blass and Whalley (2006: xvii) suggest that pre-

reading stage can emphasize vocabulary presentation and practice and present important expression In this stage, the teacher performs activities which help students activate their existing knowledge of the topic, connect their own experiences to the reading text which is useful for understanding and make guesses about the reading as they read (ibid, p 11) Lindsay and Knight

(2006: 74) conclude that in pre-reading stage, activities concentrate on

preparing students to read and also setting tasks for the next stage

Pre-reading stage plays an important role in a reading lesson since we often begin reading without an empty mind – we have some ideas of what we are going to read about (Doff, 1998: 170) as well as to create a “need to

know” (Gower et al, 1995: 97) so as to make students want to read a text (Doff, 1998: 170) Pre-reading stage also “helps readers build and retrieve from memory appropriate schemata” in order to provide students with

comprehension and helps to improve skills in “anticipation and prediction for the reading” (Hadley, 2001: 207) Pre reading stage, in effect, prepares the teacher and the students for the task and familiarizes themselves with the topic of the reading (Harmer, 1991: 89), and activates students’ background knowledge which asks them to review the text and make predictions about its content As a result, students will find the text easier to read as Baker-

Gonzalez and Blau (1995: ix) mention In other perspectives, Lewis and Hill (1993: 31) also affirm that pre-teaching stage helps to set the scence in relation to the content of the text which raises students’ interests, presents key words and ideas from the reading text

The importance of pre-reading stage is clarified by Nunan who states that it helps students, especially those with lower proficiency to apply what they already know to the task of reading (Nunan, 1999: 268) In other words, pre-reading stage helps low level students with vocabulary, grammar Lewis and Hill (1993) agree that this stage aims to activate the students’ interest and language in light of the text

In addition, Konza (2006: 90) suggests that the pre reading stage is to prepare students for the incoming texts, to activate and trigger existing

knowledge, to stimulate the readers' interests and to get their attention

2.6.2 While reading stage

While reading stage is to help the learners understand the text First students may simply do an easy scanning or skimming task, and then a task requiring more through comprehension (Davies & Pearse: 2000, 93) This second stage of a reading lesson may have some following tasks: answering questions (comprehension questions), finding key words and topic sentences, true or false sentences, sequencing jumbled sentences or paragraphs, gap-filling exercises, pronoun checks, and guessing unknown words are proposed

by Baker & Westrup (2000: 65-66); Lindsay & Knight (2006: 78) Activities

in this stage set a purpose for reading and help teachers to “monitor” the students (Lindsay & Knight, 2006: 75)

2.6.3 Post reading stage

This stage is to help learners to connect what they have read with their own ideas and experience, just as we often do in real life, and perhaps more fluently from reading, to another reading activity (Davies & Pearse, 200: 94) Post reading stage relates to activities for checking, giving feedback, and follow-up work (Lindsay & Knight: 2006, 75), writing description, focusing

on language features (Doff, 1988) and retelling the story, rewriting the story, discussing the story (Baker & Westrup: 2000) When students are checking the purpose of reading, post-stage activities are used for checking, giving feedback, and follow-up work which have been mentioned in the second stage (Lindsay & Knight, 2006: 75) The mentioned activities are, in addition,

Lindsay and Knight (2006) point out that this stage can involve other skills which the topic about the content of the reading

2.7 Pre-reading activities

2.7.1 Importance

Doff (1988) defines pre-reading activities are those that prepare

students for the text As such, they are “activities that are designed to arouse students’ interests and activate their prior knowledge, or pre-teach vocabulary

or concepts that may be difficult” (Tierney & Readance: 2000)

Nickelsen (2003:11) explains that all learning is a response to what students already know and have experience By searching the mind for

knowledge and understanding of what students already know to see how students can make the old meaning connect to the new, students respond to new information Therefore, it is significant to take time to prepare students

for the reading task Pre-reading activities are built on what students know;

so that these activities can have a considerable effect on their understanding

of what they read and their enjoyment of the reading activity (Sasson: 2007)

In this way, pre reading activities will make it easier for students to

understand the text and help them focus attention on it as they read (Doff, 1988: 59) Consequently, students find the reading text easy to read because “they will have an idea of what to expect and have a purpose for reading” (Baker-González & Blau, 1995: ix) Pre-reading activities develop learners' initial interests (Celce-Murcia: 2001: 200), stimulate what they already know about the topic, provide them with background information, help them with vocabulary and motivate them to read (Lindsay & Knight, 2006)

Lindsay and Knight (2006: 76) similarly think that pre-reading

activities prepare students to read and familiarize them with the topic of the text As a result, helping arouse students’ interests and increasing students’

potential comprehension, the teacher can do a variety of pre reading activities

that build background knowledge (Gerhard, 1996: 212-213)

2.7.2 Purposes

The overriding aim in doing any class work before the students begin to read is to “create a positive attitude in their minds towards the text to be read (Abbott et al.: 1981, 93) This view is shared by Scott (1987: ix) who states that the aim of pre-reading tasks is to arouse student interests in the topic

Celce-Murcia (2000: 191) highlights five purposes of pre-reading

instruction which are (1) to activate background information to facilitate

subsequent reading, (2) to provide specific information for successful

comprehension, (3) to encourage students’ interests, (4) to set up students’ expectations, (5) to set up students’ expectations, and models strategies that later they can use Michael Graves and Bonnie Graves (cited in Nickelsen, 2003:11) identify following six major objectives for pre-reading activities: (1)

to motivate, (2) to build or evoke background knowledge, (3) to pre-teach vocabulary and concepts, (4) to encourage pre-question and prediction, (5) to focus attention on text-specific knowledge, and (6) to suggest effective

strategies These six significant purposes are the same as those given by other scholars, such as Lewis and Hill (1993: 31), Celce-Murcia (2000: 191),

Davies (2000: 92), Lindsay and Knight (2000: 75) in that the main objectives

of the lead-in activities are to arouse interest of students and motivation

students to read by relating the topic of the text with students own existing knowledge (Gower et al, 1995:97; White in McDonough & Shaw, 1993: 113)

Therefore, by giving students reasons to read, letting students practice usefully question formation, the teacher offers activities that facilitate reading comprehension

2.7.3 Types of pre-reading activities

To increase students’ potential comprehension, the teacher can do a variety of pre reading activities that build background knowledge (Gerhard,

1996: 212-213) Many researchers have referred to so many researches for reading effectiveness There are many types of pre-reading activities:

brainstorming, prediction, previewing, discussion, guiding questions,

summary, pictorial contexts, pre-teaching vocabulary, etc which are centered

on students’ relation to the text and students’ interests in reading stage

There are many pre-reading activities; however, in this paper some preceding reading activities are suggested to the adaptation of pre reading activities

2.7.3.1 Brainstorming

The teacher can create more relaxed start to a lesson which involve more students by using brain-storming technique Brainstorming is the act of listing ideas that have a high probability of taking place in the text (Lewis & Hill, 1993: 40; Davies & Pearse, 2000: 67; Basker & Westrup, 2000: 63) In this activity, teacher gets students to suggest words or ideas that come to mind related to the text of the reading, to the picture from the text or the topic or the title They also conclude many benefits of brainstorming Teacher does not take time to prepare, just record what is said on the board Almost anything can be brainstormed and organized for later use and it is useful, fun and works (Lewis &Hill, 1993: 40) This task helps students recall words they have studied, which later they can refer back in while-reading stage (Baker &

Westrup, 2000: 64) Therefore, brainstorming is a process of developing

creative solutions to problems (Osborn, 1963) Nevertheless, this technique

& Hill, 1993: 40) Teachers can get learners to brainstorm, that is try to think

of as many ideas as possible associated with the topic, that sometimes in form

of a mind map (Lindsay & Knight, 2006: 76)

2.7.3.2 Previewing

Previewing a text means gathering as much information about the text

as students can before they actually read it (Wikipedia) The main aim

of previewing is to train students to use the titles and tables of contents to get

an idea of what a passage is about (Grellet, 1981: 59) Moreover, previewing the text by examining distinguishing features of the text such as the title, subheadings, illustrations and captions, and sections to determine (or at least hypothesize) the general topic of the reading, relevant vocabulary, and

possible challenges (Celce-Murcia, 2001) In addition, looking at visuals, headlines, titles, charts and other contextual aids in the text also means

previewing Long and Richards (1987: 228) conclude that previewing is an important activity in the reading classroom

2.7.3.3 Pre-questioning

Pre-questioning activities require students to find out the answers about the text (Wallace, 1992: 86) Recently these kinds of questions are often designed in order to give students a reason to read (Baker & Westrup, 2000: 64) Nuttall (1982: 160) recommends the use of signpost questions The

purpose of a signpost question is not to test but to guide the readers, directing their attention to the important points in the text and to prevent them from going off along a false track These kinds of questions are really effective It

is helpful to give student a question or a task (it does not have to be an actual question) before they read which gives a specific reason for reading is as a result of reading more purposefully To some extent, pre-questioning

activities work well in recalling students’ background knowledge By giving students reasons to read, letting students practice usefully question formation, teacher offers activities that facilitate reading comprehension Konza (2003: 110) agrees that questioning is the key to helping visualize White (1981) also suggests that in the first stage of reading, the main objectives are to arouse interest of students and motivation by relating the topic of the text with

students own existing knowledge with some pre-questions (in McDonough and Shaw, 1993: 113)

However, these aims of this before-question activity have two sides As pointed out by Carrell (1988:247), “pre-questioning functions to motivate students to read what follows for a purpose, that is, to gain the requisite

information to answer the question Being motivated is one of the most

important factors that can help students in the process of reading” “The more students look forward to reading and anticipating in their minds what the text could hold in store for them, the easier it will be to grasp the main points of the passage” (Grellet, 1981:62) Pre-questioning also “functions to get

students to predict within a context area what the text will be about” before studying the text (Carrell, 1988:247) They make students “aware of what they wish to learn about the topic” (Grellet 1981:62), since these questions set purposes for reading Pre-questioning assists students on the importance points of the text during the reading stage, and that a teaching not a testing device as Paulston and Bruder emphasize (1976: 165) Paulston and Bruder (1976: 165) also continue these kinds of question focus the students’ attention

on the important points of the reading rather than “trivial polite questions”

However, it is possible that questions may not be very motivating

(McDonough and Shaw, 1993: 113) and they can be "devices for testing

rather than teaching” (Nuttall, 1982: 125)

2.7.3.4 Semantic mapping

Semantic mapping allow students to “demonstrate their understanding

of the relationships among ideas” in the text This kind of drawing allows students to be free to illustrate visually “a hierarchy of ideas in a diagram format” by themselves (Silberstein, 1994: 49) By using such mapping or brainstorming activities, the students can be able to classify the words which work best when they deal with the concepts appeared in the text (Wallace, 1992: 92)

2.7.3.5 Pre-teaching vocabulary

Many points of views are suggested on teaching the meaning of

vocabulary items of successful reading When reading in a second language, students are “confronted with far more unknown vocabulary” Ediger and Rao (2000:190) state that a quality of vocabulary needs to be achieved by each student Thus, Baker & Westrup (2000: 64) emphasize teaching students with difficult and important a key word which is a short introduction session not a

“protracted session on the dictionary meanings of words” (Abbott et al, 1981: 96) is a good idea Thornbury and Watkin (2007:54) remind that “words

selections for pre-teaching are those that are likely to be both unfamiliar to learners and crucial for the performance of the task Rather, Deslea (2006: 45) highlights the importance of vocabulary, key component, to read for meaning

In another way, “building a wide vocabulary” is needed in a reading program

Lindsay & Knight (2006: 77) clarifies that integrating the pre-teaching vocabulary stage of the lesson with the stage where the teacher is creating

interest and encouraging learners’ background knowledge Thornbury and Watkin (2007:54) confirm that pre-teaching vocabulary is an integrated part

of text-based activities In effect, pre-teaching vocabulary aims at making the text easier to understand by Thornbury and Watkin (2007:54) However, Thornbury and Watkins (2007: 52) also argue that vocabulary is important, but knowledge of all the vocabulary items does not guarantee comprehension except the implication of grammar knowledge, and background knowledge

2.7.3.6 Pictorial contexts

Pictures are best used to trigger students’ background knowledge of the topic or any related words that learners have already known (Thorbury & Watkin, 2007: 54) In addition, pictures are often used in the second and foreign language classroom as a pre-reading activity because of cues for language and literacy work (Wallace, 1992: 104) Robinson (1991) also claims that visual displays “as well as printed material … one would expect that for teaching English for specific purpose there would be a rich supply of authentic visual and mechanic material” In effect, Arends (2007: 270)

purports that “pictures and illustrations can illuminate ideas and concepts in a way that words cannot, particularly for younger children and students who do not deal well with abstractions” Pictures, hence, help students with

comprehension as Ellis (1993: 26) states “visual stimuli, like verbal stimuli, are organized in comprehension and memory” To sum up, “a picture is worth

a thousand words” (Arends: 2007, 270)

2.7.3.7 Prediction

The predicting task means extracting information in form of

illustration, key words, headlines, etc as Scrivener (2005: 187) defines

Prediction is important because it activates schemata It calls into minds any experiences and associated knowledge that students have about the topic

of the text Making use of the schemata, students interpret the text Prediction can begin with the title, or about the topic of the text which helps students have an idea of what the text is likely to be about In other words, students can expect about the way the text will be likely and unlikely the topics These expectations focus students’ reading by limiting the range of things to look out for (Nuttall, 1982: 13) In addition, Blass & Whalley (2006: 31-53)

suggest using “topic of the reading to make prediction” and the titles headings

to know more about the main idea of the topic, which prepares learners to read more effective and make the reading easier to understand Anderson (2008: 136) agrees that before the reading stage, we often “anticipate” what

we will read next As a result, as we read, we will check again to see whether their predictions were correct This is what good readers often do

2.8 Principles in teaching pre-reading activities

In the teaching of pre-reading activities, some following principles are

in need to take into consideration To ensure a good introduction a reading passage, Willis (1981: 150) suggests that teachers (a) make students want to read the passage and make it worth their while to read it; (b) get students’ minds working on the themes close to the one in the passage, to make them read the text in the light of what they know already about the topic Willis also adds that about five minutes for the introduction is allowed Nuttall

(1995: 154) recommends (a) providing reasons for reading, introducing the

text, (b) setting a top-down task, (c) breaking up the text, dealing with new language, and (d) asking signpost questions Particularly, Nuttal emphasizes the importance of activating relevant schemata, and raising students' interest

A golden rule that Nuttall mentions is never saying anything if students could say it for teachers In other words, the best pre-teachings are “the ones that the teacher mostly draw out from the class” (ibid, 156) This view is shared by Doff (1988: 61) who reminds that teachers do not say too much when

introducing a text or they will “give away” what it has to say and Willis

(1981: 150) who clarifies that a teacher monologue is less likely to motivate the students than the one which involves the students in the discussion which

poses questions is highly appreciated than giving answers and summarizing

Grellet (1981: 8-9) adds that reading comprehension activities should

be suitable to the texts as well as students’ reason for reading these texts Silberstein suggests four necessary points that the teacher should not neglect:

a Activities should reflect the needs and desires of the students

b Remember that a variety of reading can provide practice in similar aspects of reading

c Reading activities are well placed within the context of integrated

10) Lee and Gundersen (2002: x) suggest that students understand the

purpose of pre reading activities in this stage

Ho Chi Minh City By conducting an experimental study with a pre-test, a post-test with four passages with four styles of an article and a questionnaire with 91 students of two classes of year, she found that combining pre-reading activities (pictorial context, vocabulary pre-teaching, pre-questioning) and vocabulary pre-teaching seemed more effective than pictorial contexts and pre-questioning alone

Taglieber (1988) who studied the effects of three prereading activities (pictorial context, vocabulary teaching and prequestioning) with the 40

undergraduate Brazilian EFL students found that the three pre reading

activities: pictorial contexts, vocabulary teaching and pre questioning helped students in getting higher comprehension via an open-ended and multiple choice reading comprehension test

Mahmoud (2001) examined the effects of three kinds of pre-reading activities (verbal, previewing, and graphic) on the ten-graders achievement in reading comprehension with 294 students Findings showed significant

progress made by the experimental group