Improving students’ reading comprehension in 10 grade at mai anh tuan high school through the use of graphic organizers

In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Viet Nam, reading seems to be the most important and useful activity in any language class,... Of the four language skills, read

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

I: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study……… 2 1.2 Statement of the problem……… …… 2-3 1.3 Aims of the study……… 3

1.4 Scope of the study……… 3

II: RELEVANT THEORIES

2.1 Definition of Reading Comprehension……… 3 2.2 Reading Comprehension Levels……… 3-4 2.3 Definition of Graphic Organizers……… 4

2.4 Roles of Graphic Organizers……… 4 2.5 Some popular types of graphic organizers……… 5-6

III: THE USE OF GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

3.1.Using a mind map ……… 7

………

8

………

9

3.4 Using Wenn Diagram ………

3.5 Result ………

3.6 Some examples of using graphic organizers

10 11 11-12

IV: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study

I have been teaching in Mai Anh Tuan high school in for 26 years and of course I always try my best to teach English effectively However, I have encountered a lot of difficulties due to the level of the students, and we haven’t found any effective solution yet, which makes me think a lot

I’m now in charge of teaching English in grade 10 During my teaching time, I have found that my students have many difficulties in Reading comprehension., teachers and students are still facing obstacles in the lessons

So I believe that the purpose of teaching reading comprehension, which is a necessary part of the English for Specific Purposes, is to give the students the opportunity to acquire vocabulary knowledge necessary for effective reading of their own technical and semi-technical texts It is intended to give learners an opportunity to gain first the fundamentals of reading comprehension skills

In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Viet Nam, reading seems to be the most important and useful activity in any language class,

especially for the students of English as a foreign language Of the four language skills, reading has always received a great deal of attention, which is emphasized by Carrell (1981: 1) that “For many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills in a second language, particularly in English as a second or foreign language” In fact, reading is considered an indispensable tool for academic study and career advancement And it is quite true to the case of Mai Anh Tuan High School, where I am teaching

1.2 Statement of the problem

Reading comprehension is crucial to a student’s success in the school and further to becoming to a lifelong learner However, many students at Mai Anh Tuan High School are struggling with reading comprehension They find it difficult to catch the main ideas of the text, to distinguish facts and details, and

to retain information longer Basically, they are at literal reading comprehension level Therefore, they often fail to catch the author’s thought

From this fact, as a teacher of English, I myself think that it is essential to find something new to improve my students’ reading comprehension level so that they can improve their reading comprehension As a result, I decide to choose the study: Improving students’ reading comprehension in 10 grade at Mai Anh Tuan high school through the use of graphic organizers The purpose of the study is to find out if graphic organizers can help students read more effectively

1.3 Aims of the study

The purpose of this research is to find out if graphic organizers can help students read more effectively It is hoped that the findings from this study will

be of some benefits to both teachers and students at Mai Anh Tuan High School

1.4 Scope of the study

classify, regroup, rearrange, collect, categorize

This study covered improving students’ reading comprehension at level of literal, reorganization and inferential comprehension and also the use of such graphic organizers as mind maps, the KWL, the 5 W’s and Venn Diagram

II RELEVANT THEORIES 2.1 Definition of Reading Comprehension

Grellet (1981: 3) considered reading comprehension or “understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible” Swam (1975: 1) also shared “a student is good at comprehension” if

“he can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information of

a text with the maximum of understanding” In the same view, Richard and Thomas (1987: 9) pointed out “reading comprehension is best described as an understanding between the author and the reader” Though these opinions are not exactly the same, they all show that reading comprehension is the process in which the readers, as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind these forms

2.2 Reading Comprehension Levels

According to the Barrett Taxonomy of Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Reading Comprehension, there are five reading comprehension levels as illustrated below

Critique, appraise, comment, appreciate

Inferential Evaluation

Literal Comprehension

Reorganization

label, list, name, recall, repeat, state

Appreciation

analyze, evaluate, justify, reason, criticize, judge predict, infer, guess

2.3 Definition of Graphic Organizers

Karen Bromley, Linda Irwin-De Vitis, and Marcia Modlo (1995, p.6) defined

“A graphic organizer is a visual representation of knowledge It is a way of structuring information, of arranging important aspects of a concept or topic into

a pattern using labels”

Sharing the same ideas, Aziz Bin Mohamed Amin (2004, p.3) claimed that “A graphic organizer is a visual and graphic display that depicts the relationships between facts, items, and ideas within a learning task

Graphic organizers are a great way to improve reading comprehension Basically, these tools are visual versions of outlines They help readers organize information so that it becomes more understandable and more memorable

2.4 Roles of Graphic Organizers

Karen Bromley, Linda Irwin-De Vitis, and Marcia Modlo (1995, p.66) gave 4 benefits from using graphic organizers, they are

- Improving comprehension skills and strategies

- Facilitating the recalling or retelling of literature

- Connecting prior knowledge and new knowledge for students

- Easing the organization and direction of students writing

Ruffini (2008, p.57) also shared with such advantages of using graphic organizers to reading comprehension as:

- Aiding learning by explicitly integrating new and old knowledge

- Generating ideas through brainstorming

- Assessing understanding or diagnosing misunderstanding

- Increasing recall

- Designing a complex structure

- Communicating and understanding complex relationships

2.5 Some popular types of graphic organizers

2.5.1 Mind maps

A mind map is a kind of graphic organizers, it is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information (see appendix 1)

2.5.2 The KWL

KWL charts assist teachers in activating students' prior knowledge of a subject

or topic and encourage inquisition, active reading, and research KWL charts are especially helpful as a pre-reading strategy when reading expository text and may also serve as an assessment of what students have learned during a unit of study The K stands for what students know, the W stands for what students want to learn, and the L stands for what the students learn as they read or research (see appendix 2)

2.5.3 Venn Diagram

A Venn diagram is an illustration of the relationships between and among sets, groups of objects that share something in common Usually, Venn diagrams are

used to depict set intersections (see appendix 3) This activity will sharpen

students’ skills for comparison and contrast between or among things

2.5.4 The “5 W’s”

Five W's diagrams are a type of graphic organizer that let the student

think about and list the "Who, When, Where, What, and Why" of a story or event in a simple visual way (see appendix 4) This activity will help students

understand of what they have read, and they can see the relationship between all the information

III THE USE OF GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

3.1 Using a mind map

I always begin my students of 10A, 10B at Mai Anh Tuan high school with a simple activity, that is, the use of a mind map I do this activity in pre-reading stage In order to make students easy to follow, firstly, I present the topic that

my students are going to read in the central circle of the mind map Then I ask students to list as many things related to the topic as possible The reasons to do this activity are to activate students’ prior knowledge, to arouse students’ interest in order to get them involved and to help them identify sequence of events Therefore, the students of 10A, 10B classes will gain their reading comprehension at reorganization level

3 2 Using the KWL

I usually introduce this activity in pre-reading stage and post-reading stage to

my students of 10A, 10B at Mai Anh Tuan high school At first, before they read the text, I tell my students to share some information, for example:

- What you already know about the topic

- What you want to know about the topic.

And then, after my students finish reading the text, I ask them “What you

learned in the lesson” Thus, when my students do the KWL, they also activate

their schema as well as they can find the main ideas of the text

3.3 Using the 5 W’s

I let students of 10A, 10B at Mai Anh Tuan high school do this activity in post-reading stage I divide my students into groups of four and ask them to discuss 5 questions in the chart as follows:

Who is the text about?

What happened in the text?

When did it happen?

Where did it happen?

Why did it happen?

After that, my students look at the chart and identify the relationships between

or among characters (who) with events (what), time (when), places (where) and reasons (why) In other words, my students have to summarize the text based on the information in the chart Hence, my students can gain such advantages from this activity as sharpening their skills for gathering important information and summarizing as well as retaining information longer

3 4 Using Venn Diagram

I introduce this activity in post-reading stage At first, my students find differences between or among sets, groups of objects and then they find some similarities between or among things I draw circles in which students illustrate their ideas It can be seen that this activity sharpen students’ skills for comparison and contrast between or among things They have to analyze and synthesize the information in the text so as to give the conclusion Once students practice this activity, they gain their reading comprehension at inferential and evaluation levels

3.5 Result

At the beginning of the school-year 2020-2021

Classe

s

Student

s

Excellent Good Average Under

Average 9→1

0

10B 42 0 0 5 12 23

At the end of the school-year 2020 – 2021

Classe

s

Student

s

Excellent Good Average Under

Average 9→1

0

3.6 Here are some examples of using graphic organizers

Unit 5: Part A: READING: TECHNOLOGY AND YOU

ENGLISH GRADE 10

A Pre-reading activities

Activity 1 : mind- map

Computer

speaker

CPU

CD ROMS

keyboard

mouse

computer Screen (VDU)

floppy disks

printer

Unit 12: part A - READING: MUSIC

ENGLISH GRADE 10

Unit 3: part A - READING: PEOPLE BACKGROUND_

ENGLISH GRADE 10

Unit 11: Part A - READING: NATIONAL PARKS

MUSIC

piano

violin

guitar

flute

rock folk

classical

jazz rap

lyrical

peaceful

entertain

set tone for events

express feelings solemn

mournful

IV Procedure

A Pre - reading activities

Activity 1 Think of all the words that come to your mind which

are related to the key word below Fill in the semantic map.

drum

rousing

relaxing

PRE-READING

Activity 2: KW

Work on your own Write down what yo u know or think

you know and what you want to know about Marie

Curie

Her scientific works

What I want

to know

She was born in Poland

What I learned

What I know or

think I know

ENGLISH GRADE 10

C Post- Reading

Activity: Look at the LCS table and see what you have

learned so far about Fill in the “LCS” column

-S ( What I still want to

know )

C ( What I want to

change )

L ( what you have

learned about

NATIONAL

Unit 16: Part A - READING: HISTORIICAL PLACES

ENGLISH GRADE 10

Read the text and complete the table below.

-Why Where

When What

Who

IV: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

1 Conclusion

1 Graphic organizers were all found to be highly effective in improving

reading comprehension

2 My students are using graphic organizers significantly outperformed their peers who did not use graphic organizers regardless of whether they

developed their own graphic organizers or used teacher generated ones

3 My students benefited significantly from using graphic organizers

4 My students are interested in reading lessons by using graphic organizers

2 Suggestions

From the study, I would like to give some suggestions for the teachers, for the students in my school and other schools in Thanh Hoa province can use

it more popularly in teaching reading comprehension

Thanh hóa, ngày 16 tháng 05 năm 2021

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Lê Hồng Phong

1 Bromley, K (1995) Graphic Organizers Scholastic.

2 Grellet, F (1981) Developing Reading Skills: A practical guide to reading

comprehension exercises Cambridge: CUP

3 Harmer, H (1989) The Practice of English language teaching Harlow:

longman

4 Karakas, M (2002) The Effects of Reading Activities on ELT Trainee Teachers’ Comprehension of Short Stories Canakkale: CanakkaleOnsekiz Mart

University

5 Norton, L S (2009) Action Research in Teaching and Learning Routledge.

6 Williams, E (1984) Reading in the Language Classroom New York:

Macmillan