Some difficulties in reading lessons facing 10th students in yen mo a high school, ninh binh province and suggested solutions

LIST OF TABLESTable 2.1: Students' Mark at the First Examination in High school Table 2.2: Students complete the reading tasks in reading lesson or not.. Table 2.3: The reason students c

Vinh university Foreign languages department

************

Vũ thị hiền

AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

(The New Textbook)

(Một số khó khăn trong bài học đọc của học sinh lớp 10 trờng

THPT Yên Mô A, Ninh Bình và giải pháp đề xuất)

Graduation thesis

Field: Methodology

Vinh - 2009ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The study would not have been completed without the invaluable assistanceand encouragement of many people for whom I am grateful

I especially would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Vũ ThịViệt Hương, M.A who gave me valuable advice and guidance, and help incarrying out this graduation thesis.

I also would like to thank to all my teachers at the foreign languagedepartment of Vinh University for their lectures and advice which are very usefulfor me to finish the study

I wish to acknowledge my great appreciation to the teachers and students inYen Mo A high school, who took part in my survey actively

Finally, I wish to express my deep thanks to my parents and friends who haveencouraged and supported me during the time of doing this thesis

Though the study has been done with all my attempts, my limitations of abilityand knowledge may cause mistakes in the thesis Therefore, all comments andremarks on the thesis would be highly appreciated

Vinh, summer, 2009

Vu Thi Hien

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Students' Mark at the First Examination in High school

Table 2.2: Students complete the reading tasks in reading lesson or not

Table 2.3: The reason students can not complete the reading tasks of the text inreading lesson

Table 2.4: Reasons make it difficult for students to understand the reading textTable 2.5: The ways students read the text

Table 2.6: The way students deal with the unfamiliar words

Table 2.7: The ways students get the main idea of the text while reading

Table 2.8: The ways students get the specific information

Table 2.9: The pre-reading activities teachers provide

Table 2.10: How teachers teach vocabulary

Table 2.11: The effect of guiding questions on students

Table 2.12: The while-reading activities teachers provide

Table 2.13: How the teachers organize the first reading

Table 2.14: How the teachers correct students' works

Table 2.15: The teachers continue the lesson with post-reading activities

Table 3.1: The suggested answer for Task 3 of Reading lesson in Unit 1 the newtextbook "Tieng Anh 10"

TABLE OF CONTENT

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ii

LIST OF TABLES iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the Study 1

2 Aims of the Study 1

3 Scope of the Study 2

4 Method of the Study 2

5 Design of the Study 2

PART II: CONTENT 4

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICLE BACKGROUND 4

1.1 Definition of Reading 4

1.2 Reading Comprehension 5

1.3 Factors that Affect the Learners’ Reading Success/ Failure 6

1.3.1 Subjective Factors 6

1.3.1.1 Motivation 6

1.3.1.2 Reading Purposes 7

1.3.1.3 Reading Skills 8

1.3.1.4 Reading Strategies 10

1.3.2 Objective Factors 11

1.3.2.1 Reading Material 11

1.3.2.2 Teacher’s Teaching Method 14

1.4 Summary 16

CHAPTER 2: THE INVESTIGATION 18

2.1 Research Questions 18

2.2 Research Setting 18

2.3 The Subject and the Characteristics of the New Textbook "Tieng Anh 10" 18 2.4 Description of Questionnaires for Teachers and Students 19

2.5 Procedure 20

2.6 Results and Discussion 20

2.6.1 The Primary Qualification of Students 20

2.6.2 Difficulties in Reading Material 21

2.6.2.1 The Reading Text 23

2.6.2.2 The Reading Tasks 25

2.6.3 Difficulties in Students’ Reading Strategies 25

2.6.3.1 The Ways Students Read the Text 25

2.6.3.2 The Ways Students Deal with the Unfamiliar Words 27

2.6.3.3 The Ways Students get the Main Idea 28

2.6.3.4 The Ways Students get the Specific Information 29

2.6.4 Problems in Teaching Methods of the Teachers 31

2.6.4.1 The Pre-Reading Phase 31

2.6.4.2 The While-Reading Phase 35

2.6.4.3 The Post-Reading Phase 39

2.7 Summary 39

CHAPTER 3: SUGGESTED SOLLUTIONS 41

3.1 Using Reading Strategies to Develop Students' Reading Skills 41

3.1.1 Suggestions for Students 41

3.1.2 Suggestions for Teachers 45

3.2 Using and Developing Reading Activities 47

3.2.1 Fully Exploiting the Pre-Reading Activities 47

3.2.1.1 Introducing the Text 48

3.2.1.2 Presenting New Vocabulary 48

3.2.1.3 Giving Guiding Questions 51

3.2.2 Having a Appropriate Way of Correcting Students' Works 52

3.2.3 Well Preparing for Post-Reading Activities 52

3.3 Summary 53

PART III: CONCLUSION 55

REFERENCES

APPENDIX 1

APPENDIX 2

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the Study

Nowadays, with the tendency of globalization and integration, English playsthe role of an effective international communicative language Thus, learningEnglish becomes very popular One of the important skills in learning English aswell as other foreign languages is reading skill Reading not only helps studentswiden their knowledge, but also enables them to develop other language skills:speaking, writing and listening as well Moreover, today there are so manytechnical and scientific materials published in English The reading knowledge,therefore, is more and more important for the English learners

The role of reading is undeniable However, both the teachers and students inYen Mo A high school, Ninh Binh province are not really satisfied with theirresults of teaching and learning, especially learning reading The teachers often findtheir students' reading performance disappointing And in fact, most of the studentsread with less understanding than one might expect them to Many of them can notcomplete the reading tasks in the textbook Also, lots of them complain that theycan not understand the reading text Why do the students fail to learn reading inEnglish? What are their difficulties in learning reading? And what can the teachersand the students can do to help the students overcome this problem? Thesequestions are in concern of so many teachers

For the above reasons, we decide to choose the topic "Some difficulties in

reading lessons facing 10th form students in Yen Mo A high school, Ninh Binh province and suggested solutions (The new textbook)" as the study of our

graduation thesis

2 Aims of the Study

 To investigate some difficulties that the 10th form students face whenlearning reading

 To give some suggested solutions to help the students overcome thedifficulties in order to improve their reading effectiveness.

3 Scope of the Study

Due to the limitation of time and other objective factors, this thesis justfocuses on the difficulties facing 10th from students, which are investigated in Yen

Mo A high school, and the solution suggested to help students overcome thesedifficulties

4 Methods of the Study

The study uses the methods as following:

 Statistic and classifying

 Analytic and synthetic method

 Quantitative qualitative method

5 Design of the Study

The thesis consists of three main parts as following:

 Part I: Introduction

This part deals with the author's reason for choosing the study, the aim, scope,method and design of the study

 Part II: Content

This part consists of three chapters:

- Chapter 1 with the title "Theoretical background" gives an overview onreading and reading comprehension, and the subjective and objective factors thataffect students' reading success or failure

- Chapter 2 entitled "The investigation" which describes the analyzes theresults of the questionnaire and gives the assessment on the effects of the reading

materials, the students' reading strategies, and the teachers' teaching methods on thestudents' reading productivity.

- Chapter 3 has the title "Suggested solutions", providing some suggestedsolutions to overcome the students' difficulties in reading lesson

 Part III: Conclusion

This part is about the summary of the main points presented in the study

The study ends with the "References" which lists all the materials and sources

of information used in the study, and the "Appendix" in which the questionnairesfor teachers and students are mentioned

PART II: THE CONTENT

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Definition of Reading

As in learning a foreign language in general and in learning English inparticular, reading is considered as the most important skill to master in order toensure learner’s success in learning And there have been so many different ways

of understanding about the term “reading”

Silberstein (1993, p.12) suggested “reading is a complex informationprocessing skill in which the reader interact with the text to (re)create meaningfuldiscourse”

In this definition, according to Silberstein, the reader is an active and solving individual who uses a number of skills and strategies to facilitatecomprehension In other words, by analyzing, hypotension and interacting with thegiven text, the reader will be able to interpret and then create a meaningful onewhich helps them understand the text better Thus it is the goal of the readers andthe characteristics of the reading passage that suggest or provide sub-types ofreading activities

problem-In a study of essential skills for a reading test, there is a definition of reading

"reading is the process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interactionamong reader’s existing knowledge, the information suggested by the writtenlanguage and the context of the reading situation" (cited from

http://www.michiganreading.org)

This point of view emphasized on the reading skills that a good reader shouldapply various reading skills independently and flexibly in a various readingsituation, not simply demonstrate mastery of those skills That means, in order tounderstand a reading text thoroughly, readers play an active role in applying theirown knowledge combined with the provided information and the context in which

the text should be taken into consideration Thus, it is necessary to developstrategies motivated readers in education.

From these above definitions, we can come to the conclusion that reading is anactive and receptive skill in which the readers play a very active role in analyzingand decoding the text in order to communicate or realize communicative functions.Thus, it is important that students learn to read efficiently

1.2 Reading Comprehension

Goodman (1971: 135) has described reading as a “psycholinguistic guessinggame in which the reader reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has beenencoded by a writer as a graphic display” According to Goodman, the reader (andthe efficient reader) does not need to use all of the textual cues The better reader isable to make correct predictions, the less visual perceptual information the readerrequires:

…the reader does not use all the information available to him Reading is a process in which the reader picks and choose from the available information only enough to select and predict a language structure which is decodable (Goodman, 1973: 164)

Smith (1973) strongly supports Goodman’s opinions of reading According toSmith, reading is not even primarily a visual process Non-visual information thatcomes from the brain is more important in reading than what appears on the printedpage Non-visual information includes all the things the reader already knows aboutreading, grammar, syntax, semantics, context and world in general Reading is,therefore, not the passive perception of meaning from the text It is an activeprocess, making use of the interaction between the reader’s knowledge and the text.According to Grellet (1981: 7), “reading is a constant process of guessing, andwhat one brings to the text is often more important than what one finds in it” Thatmeans how people process the reading text is more important than the result readersget This opinion seems reasonable in a reading lesson more than in other situations

such as reading newspaper for information, or reading the train schedule for thetime of the train, ect.

These opinions, though not exactly the same in details, have much in common.That is, reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and thetext, resulting in comprehension Reading comprehension is much more thandecoding Reading comprehension results when the reader knows which skills andstrategies are appropriate for the type of text, and understand how to apply them toaccomplish the reading purpose

1.3 Factors that effect the Learners’ Reading Success/ Failure

Reading in a language which is not the learner's first language is a source ofconsiderable difficulty Besides taking considerable longer to read in their secondlanguage, students who understood the words and the structures of the text werestill unable to understand what they read in the second language as well as in thefirst language The question here is that what factors affect their reading success orfailure? There are subjective and objective factors that contribute to the success orfailure of the readers

1.3.1 Subjective Factors

The factors that have quite much effect on the success or failure of the readersare the subjective one It contains motivation of the readers in reading, theirpurpose and their reading skills and strategies

1.3.1.1 Motivation

Motivation is a part of complex cycle in reading and learning in content areas.Conley (1995) pointed out that when students are motivated and knowledgeable,the door is open, learning is inviting, and students achieve The more studentsachieve, the more motivated they are to let everything in unfortunately, this cyclealso works against students: they can be so unmotivated that the doors shut andthey no longer try For these students, the door shuts not only on present learningbut also on any future success

In general, students' motivation refers to a student's willingness, need desire,and compulsion However, it also concerns the reasons or goals that underline thestudents' involvement or noninvolvement in academic activities In other words,that is the source of motivation The students' motivation may be resulted by theprior knowledge about the text they are reading Conley also mentioned the closerelationship between interest and prior knowledge about a topic According to him,the more students know about the topic, the more interest they show in learning.The more knowledge and interest, the better students comprehend what they arereading Conversely, the fewer students know about the topic, the less interest theyshow And the less knowledge and interest, the fewer students comprehend.

Thus, boring reading topic makes learners feel unmotivated And when theyare not interested in the reading, they will read the text unwillingly As the result,they will read ineffectively

It can be conducted that, motivation is also a factor that make students readbetter Therefore, it is the teacher's duty to pay attention to students' motivationwhen teaching reading He should find out what help to motivate students and whatmake less motivation in students to have the suitable teaching methods

1.3.1.2 Reading Purpose

According to Grabe and Stoler (2002), reading purposes can be classifiedunder seven main heading as follow:

1 Reading to search for simple information

2 Reading to skim quickly

3 Reading to learn from texts

4 Reading to integrate information

5 Reading to write (or search for information needed for writing)

6 Reading to critique texts

7 Reading for general comprehension

Grabe and Stoler (2002) indicate that reading to search for simple information

is a common reading ability It is used so often in reading tasks that it is probablybest seen as a type of reading ability In reading to search, the readers typically scanthe text for a specific piece of information or a specific word For example, weusually search through a train schedule to find the name of the train that we need orthe time of the train

Reading for general comprehension is the most basis purpose for reading,underlying and supporting most other purposes for reading People might read anovel, a short story, a newspaper article or a report of some types to understand theinformation in the text, to be entertained and/ or to use the information for aparticular purpose However, the overall goal of reading for general information isnot to remember most of the specific details but to have a good grasp of the mainideas and supporting ideas, and to relate those main ideas to background knowledge

as appropriate Reading for general comprehension, when accomplished by askilled fluent reader, requires very rapid and automatic processing of words, strongskills in forming a general meaning representation of main ideas, and efficientcoordination of many processes under very limited time constraints

Besides, when learning reading, the learner also has some other purposes That

is to complete the reading tasks which are designed after each reading lesson, tolearn vocabulary, to get some formation, ect Most of the reading tasks are nowdesigned to require readers to get specific information or to get general idea of thereading text Thus, reading for general comprehension and for specific informationare the most basic purposes for reading

1.3.1.3 Reading Skills

Skill means the ability to perceive and perform something It is the familiarknowledge of any art or science, united with readiness and dexterity in execution orperformance, or in the application of the art or science to practical purposes Inlanguage learning, reading skill means the ability to process the reading text Most

students learning English expect to be efficient readers who have good readingskills However reading is a completely individual activity and students in the samecourse may be reading at different levels of difficulties in English, just as they do intheir native language Obviously, it is not easy to achieve the true purpose of theirreading that is having skills and then using them efficiently Munby, (1987: 25)distinguishes the following reading 'micro skills':

1 Recognizing the script of a language

2 Deducing the meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items

3 Understanding explicitly stated information, information when notexplicitly stated, conceptual meaning, relations between the parts of atext through lexical devices, relations within the sentence, cohesionbetween parts of a text through grammatical cohesion devices

4 Recognizing indicators in discourse

5 Interpreting text by going outside it

6 Identifying the main point or important information in a piece ofdiscourse

7 Distinguishing the main idea from supporting details

8 Extracting salient points to summarize the text or an idea

9 Skimming

10 Scanning to locate specifically required information

11 Transcoding information to diagrammatic display

12 Basic reference skills

In fact, when reading a text, readers can not use these skills separately Theyhave to combine some skills If the purpose of reading is to get general ideas of thetext, for example, the reader has to skim the text In addition, he/ she need tounderstand relation between parts of the text, and the relation within sentences, etc

To sum up, which reading skill the learners use depends on the readingpurpose and the learners read effectively or not partly depend on the reading skills

they use The task of the teacher is to select and teach the skills their students need

so that they can acquire a better understanding and improve their reading ability

1.3.1.4 Reading Strategies

Reading strategies means the way readers use their reading skills to read thetext, to deal with unfamiliar words, or to get information, ect However, in readinglesson, teachers are often frustrated by the fact that students do not automaticallytransfer the strategies they use when reading in their native language to reading in alanguage they are learning Instead, they seem to think reading means starting at thebeginning and going word by word, stopping to look up every unknown vocabularyitem, until they reach the end

Effective teachers show students how they can adjust their reading behavior todeal with a variety of situations, types of input, and reading purposes They helpstudents develop a set of reading strategies and match appropriate strategies to eachreading situation Munby (1987) also suggested several strategies that can helplearners read more quickly and effectively as following:

 Previewing: reviewing titles, section headings, and photo captions to get asense of the structure and content of a reading selection

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

 Skimming and scanning: using a quick survey of the text to get the mainidea, identify text structure, confirm or question predictions

 Guessing from context: using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas inthe text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping tolook them up

 Paraphrasing: stopping at the end of a section to check comprehension byrestating the information and ideas in the text.

When language learners use reading strategies, they find that they can controlthe reading experience, and they gain confidence in their ability to read thelanguage

In short, subjective factors such as motivation, reading purposes, readingskills, and reading strategies are very important for the readers Each learner shouldknow what is the source of their motivation, and how to promote it, how to achieveand use their reading skills appropriately to have effective reading strategies

1.3.2 Objective Factors

Besides subjective factor, objective factor also causes the difficulty of thereading process Objective factors may be the reading material and/ or the methodsteacher uses in a lecture

It is clear that lack of vocabulary dealing with the reading text is a problemthat most readers face However according to Hedge (2000), the degree ofdifficulty will vary with the demands of the text, the prior knowledge of the reader,the degree of automatically a learner has achieve in general word reorganization,any specialist lexical knowledge a student might has, and the learner's firstlanguage

b Grammar

Grammar contains the aspect of syntactic or structure and the grammaticalcohesive devices such as reference items (for example, 'they', 'these masters', 'thelater'), substitution, ellipsis or deletion of items (for example deletion of relativepronounces 'which', 'that', 'who') Hedge (2000) has suggested that deletion canmake a text 'opaque' to the reader He has given the following example:

"Hyperactivity in children is a common problem … many parents have toconfront They must learn to understand the symptoms … typical of thismusical condition." (p.115)

Here 'which' has been deleted between 'problem' and 'many parents', and'which are' between 'symptoms' and 'typical' Hedge describes an experiment withtwenty Hebrew-speaking students in which one group was given an original text ofapproximately 300 words containing a degree of opacity and the second groupanswered the same question on a more 'transparent' version of the text, i.e.reworked to eliminate syntactic difficulty The second group did consistently better,especially on questions requiring specific information

Thus Hedge's experiment seems to confirm the hypothesis that foreignlanguage readers are partly dependent on processing syntactic structuressuccessfully in order to get access to meaning In other words, the aspect ofgrammar makes readers difficult in processing the text

c Text Topic and Content

Just as it is commonly assumed that what readers know will affect what theyunderstand when reading, so too it is commonly assumed that text content willaffect how learners process text Lacking experience with the topic makes learnerscomprehend very little of the information in the reading passage

The effect of text content on the reader's comprehension has been improved bySteffensen and Joag-Dev (1984) Steffensen and Joag-Dev conducted a study usingtwo descriptions of weddings both written in English One was a description of an

American wedding, while the other was of an Indian one Both the Indian students,for whom English was an L2, and the American students, for whom English wasthe L1, read the descriptions and were asked to recall the descriptions It was foundthat readers comprehend text about their own cultures more accurately than theother did While the readers indicated that the words were easy to understand, theunfamiliar cultural protocol of an Indian wedding made the passage more difficult

to remember

Johnson (1982) has a study investigating the effects of the cultural origin ofprose on the reading comprehension of 46 Iranian intermediate advanced ESLstudents at the university level Half of the subjects read the unadapted Englishtexts of two stories, one from Iranian folklore and one from American folklore,while the other half read the same stories in adapted English Results revealed thatthe cultural origin of the stories had a greater effect on comprehension thansyntactic or semantic complexity of the text

To sum up, readers appear to have a higher level of comprehension when thecontent is familiar to them Given this, second language readers do not possess thesame degree of content schema as first language readers, and hence, this can result

in comprehension difficulties To help students, the teacher should "facilitatereading by providing specific background experience" (Robinett: 1978)

d Text Type

It is obvious that certain topics are associated with certain types of text Forexample, descriptions of how things work are more likely to be found in expositorytexts than in narrative texts Different types of texts tend to be organizeddifferently

According to Nuttall (1996), understanding the organization of the whole textcontributes to an understanding of individual parts of it More importantly,recognizing the organization of the texts usually leads to clearer understanding ofits overall message

1.3.2.2 Teacher's Teaching Methods

Teachers play an important role in facilitating reading and in helping learnerachieve reading purpose In addition, with the advanced characteristic of the newtextbook, teachers should have appropriate methods in teaching And the methodthe teachers are recently using is the communicative method in which the studentsare the centre of the lesson, and the 4 English skills (listening, speaking, readingand writing) are developed equally

It is the fact that, in order to help students read and comprehend a written text,

it is best to provide them with a variety of activities carried out before reading atext, while reading activities performed during reading it, and post readingactivities conducted after students have completed reading the text and finished allthe tasks and exercises during pre- and while-reading stages The intention is toensure that reading is 'taught' in the sense of helping readers develop increasingabilities to tackle texts Many contemporary materials, according to Williams(1984), reflect this three-phase procedure

a Pre-reading Phase

In real life, people do not read because they have to, but because they want to.They usually have a purpose in reading, for example, they want to find outsomething, they want to check or clarify some information, ect Readers do notusually begin reading with a completely empty mind but have some ideas of whatthey are going to read about They will usually have certain questions in their mind,and they may also be able to make a number of predictions or guesses

However, in English classes, the situation is very different According to Doff(1988), usually students read a text not because they want but because the teachertells them to, or because it is in the lesson Thus, to help them to read, it isnecessary to give them some reasons for reading or to give them some informationthat they want to find the answer to This can be:

 Giving students a brief introduction to the text:

This helps provide students with some primary notions about the text andincrease their interest in the text.

 Presenting students some new words which will appear in the text:

It is not a good idea for the teachers to present all the new words in textbefore students read it, because students can guess the meaning of manywords from the context of the text Thus, to develop students' learning skill,teacher can help students to guess the meaning of new words, and onlyprovide meaning of the words which is difficult to guess and to understandthe text

 Providing students with one or two guiding questions to think about as theyread:

Giving guiding questions can help to provide students with the reasons toread, give them something to look for as they read the text, and leadstudents towards the main point of the text

b While-Reading Phase

Generally, the aims of while-reading activities are to encourage learners to beflexible, active and reflective readers In this stage, students may be required tohave two times do reading as following:

 First reading:

Students read silently once through the text and then discuss the guidingquestions Reading silently without whispering or moving lips will helpstudents read more quickly and focus on more important words It alsohelps students to focus on meaning rather than form

 Second reading and do the reading tasks:

After having read the text for the first time, and tried to understand thegeneral meaning, students are provided some while-reading activities suchas: follow the order of ideas in a text, react to the opinions expressed,understand the information it contains, confirm expectations or prior

knowledge, or predict the next part of the text from various clues Toencourage these activities, teachers can use a range of exercise types, forexample Hedge (2000) also suggested some exercise types "ask students totick a list of expectations or find answers to their own questions, give themquestions to stop and think about, or provide a chart for them to fill in withpoints of information".

When providing while-reading activities for students, teachers should be surethat students have looked at the activities before they go through the text again fordetailed comprehension

c Post-reading Phase

Post-reading activities are done after the students have understood the textcompletely so that they can check and discuss the activities done in while-readingphase, and make use of what they have read in a meaning way For examplestudents may be required to retell the reading text so that they have opportunity todiscuss their opinion They may also be asked to write about the topic using theinformation from the text or to compare the information given with what they haveknown and so on

In short, teacher plays an important part in facilitating reading and in helpingstudents to achieve reading purposes Teachers have responsibility to motivatereading by selecting or creating appropriate texts, to design useful reading tasks, toset up effective classroom procedures, and to create a supportive environment forpracticing reading

1.4 Summary

In this chapter, the definition of reading and nature of readingcomprehension are mentioned More importantly, factors that affect learners'reading success or failure are discussed thoroughly

Motivation, reading purpose, reading skills and reading strategies are thesubjective factors that are very important for readers Students' motivation has the

relationship the interest of reading, thus, the teachers should know how to promotestudents' motivation in the lesson.

There are so many reading skills that every learner expects to achieve,however, they should know how to combine the skills effectively in reading Andthe responsibility of teachers is to choose the appropriate skills to teach students

Reading strategies can be the way students read the text, the way they dealwith unfamiliar words, ect The most important is that how to apply the readingskills effectively in reading strategies to have best result This is a difficulty oflearners

Unknown words, new grammar structures, boring reading topics, unfamiliarreading topics and text types are also the difficult that readers might face whilereading It is, therefore, necessary for the teachers to find out if their students faceany of the difficulties above so that they can help learners solve those difficulties

The teaching method of the teachers also affects the students learning,although it effects not too much Thus, the teachers should be sure that the readinglesson must have three phases That is pre-, while-, and post-reading phase Thepre-reading phase is very important as is the preparation phase It helps students tohave some primary notions about the content of the text they are going to read, andactivate their prior knowledge of the topic and any relevant language they mightalready know In this phase, the teacher can solve students' problem related tovocabulary, grammar, text topics, and focus them on reading purpose, ect While-reading phase is the phase that learners read the text and solve the reading tasks.The teacher consolidates the learners' comprehension in the post-reading phase

In short, all the factors mentioned above occur in a reading lesson and more

or less affect the learners' success To assist learners to read better, these factorsshould be taken into account

CHAPTER 2: THE INVESTIGATION

2.1 Research Questions

The study aims to find the answers for the two research questions:

1 What are the difficulties that the 10th form students encounter in thereading lesson?

2 What suggestions can be made in the learning and teaching process inorder to help students overcome these difficulties

2.2 Research Setting

The study was carried out at Yen Mo A high school, Ninh Binh provincewhere English is taught as a foreign language

2.3 The Subject and Characteristics of the New Textbook "Tieng Anh 10"

The subject for this study includes two groups of participants:

The first group includes 5 Vietnamese teachers of English who are teaching atYen Mo A high school, Ninh Binh province in which there are 1 male and 4 femaleones All of them have been teaching English for at least 4 years

The second group of participants consists of 100 students who are from 2classes of 10th form at Yen Mo A high school, Ninh Binh province They have 3periods of English a week using new textbook "Tieng Anh 10" They have beenlearning English for 3 or 5 years And some of them are taking part in the extraEnglish classes

The new textbook "Tieng Anh 10" that 10th form students in Yen Mo A highschool, Ninh Binh province use is for basic English It is theme-based with 16Units and the others 6 lessons for revision Each Unit has an equivalent topicincluding the following lesson:

READING includes one or more reading passages from 180-220 words long

and the reading tasks to do while reading the passage(s) It helps students becomefamiliar with the topic of the Unit and develop their reading comprehension skill

SPEAKING enables students to improve their speaking skill by various kinds

of activities Speaking topic is based on the topic of each particular Unit

LISTENING contains paragraphs or dialogues related to the topic of each

Unit which aims at helping students practice their listening comprehension skill andconsolidate and correct mistakes in pronunciation or in using structures

WRITING composes of exercises which help students practice their writing

skill by different kinds of text such as writing a letter, describing or narrating anevent

LANGUAGE FOCUS has two smaller parts:

 Pronunciation helps students revise how to pronounce both monothongs

and diphthongs, distinguish between 2 similar sounds, and have chance topractice those sounds in words and sentences

 Grammar & Vocabulary synthesizes the main grammatical points and

vocabulary issues which are the focus of the Unit It contains exercises forstudents to practice using introduced grammatical points

The six lessons for revision are written in the form of "TEST YOURSELF"

with the exercises of listening, reading, grammar, and writing in order to test thestudents' ability and knowledge after 2 - 3 Units

2.4 Description of Questionnaires for Teachers and Students

The study uses two questionnaires, one for the teachers and one for thestudents

The questionnaire for the students contains 15 questions which was delivered

to 100 students in two classes in Yen Mo A high school The 15 questions aredesigned as the multi-choice question with the provided suggested answers Insome questions, the students can choose more than one answer for a question Thequestionnaire aims to get information about the students' opinions about the readingmaterials, the students' reading strategies, and the teachers' teaching method

The questionnaire for the teacher includes 3 multi-choice questions and 4opened questions The 3 multi-choice questions aim to get the teachers' opinionsabout the reason why the students can not understand the reading text and completethe reading tasks And the aim of the 4 opened questions is to get teachers' opinionsabout the primary qualification of 10th form students and the difficulties studentsencounter, and their suggestion to help students overcome these difficulties.

2.5 Procedure

The study has procedure as following:

Firstly, the copies of the questionnaire for students were delivered to 100 10thform students from 2 classes (10D and 10N) in Yen Mo A high school Afterdelivering the questionnaires, the author guided them to answer these questions, incase they meet any troubles with the questionnaire The copies of questionnaire forteachers were also given to the 5 teachers All of 105 responses were collected oneweek later

Secondly, the results and the information collected from the questionnaireswere then analyzed and synthesized

2.6 Results and Discussion

2.6.1 The Primary Qualification of Students in English in High School

When being asked the mark students got at the first examination in highschool, students have the answers as following:

Mark Number of Students %

Table 2.1: Students' Mark at the First Examination in High school

From the table above, the amount of students get the mark of 5 - 6 is biggest(56%), meanwhile, there is only 2 students (2%) get the mark of 9 - 10, and 15

students (15%) get the mark of 7 - 8 And there are 27 students (27%) get the mark

of 1 - 4

Thus, the total amount of students get the high mark (17 students) is much lessthan the total amount of students get the low mark (83 students) Although there areonly 27% of students get the very low mark, the amount of students get the highmark is very little And 56 other students get the pass mark It shows that theprimary qualification of students when they access the high school is very low

In the teachers' opinion, with the question "How do you think about theprimary qualification of 10th form students in your school?", The author gets theresult as following: 2 out of 5 teachers (40%) say that the primary qualification of10th form students in their school is very bad 2 other teachers say that the primaryqualification of 10th form students there is not good And only 1 teacher says thatthe primary qualification of 10th form students is acceptable

The result above shows that the teachers are not satisfied with the primaryqualification of the 10th form students there According to most of them (80%), theprimary qualification of 10th form students is not good This finding is quitesimilar to the result of the same question for students

To sum up, both teachers and students say that the primary qualification of10th form students is not good This is the initiative difficult for the students

2.6.2 Difficulties in Reading Material

The question "In reading lesson, do students complete the reading task of thetext?" is used to ask both teachers and students and the author get the result asfollowing:

Students complete the reading tasks in

reading lesson or not

Teachers'opinions(%)

Table 2.2: Students complete the reading tasks in reading lesson or not.

From the table above, it is clear that the result from asking students is quitesimilar to the one asking teachers If 20% of teachers say that their students cancomplete the reading tasks of the text in reading lesson, 16% of students have thesame opinion The same situation to the answer "No" (Students can not competethe reading tasks of the text in reading lesson) with 20% of teachers and 25% ofstudents choosing The similarity is nearly exact for the answer "Sometimes" with60% of teachers and 59% of students choosing

Thus, the amount of students can always finish the reading tasks of the text inreading lesson is very little while a very large amount of students sometimes ornever finish the reading tasks of the text in reading lesson It shows that the readingmaterial also causes difficulty for students However, what is the reason for it?Let's see the result of the next question

With the question "If students can not finish the reading tasks of the text inreading lesson, what is the reason for it?" asking teachers and students, the authorget the result as following:

The reasons students can not complete

the reading tasks of the text in reading

lesson

Teacher'sopinions(%)

Students' opinions

(%)

1 The text is too long 60% 57%

2 The text is difficult 60% 85%

3 The tasks are difficult 0% 58%

reading tasks 57% of them state that the texts are too long for them to complete thereading tasks And 58% of them complain about the difficulty of the reading tasks.

In teachers' opinions, there are 60% of the teachers agree that the texts are toolong for students to complete the reading tasks, and 60% of them say that the textsare difficult None of them complain about the difficulty of the reading tasks

Otherwise, some of teachers and students also give another reason for studentsfor not being able to complete the reading tasks of the text while in reading lesson.The reason is that there are some reading passages having too many tasks so thatstudents can not complete them all And one teacher (20%) frankly presents anotherreason that is students are too lazy to do the reading tasks

Thus, the results of the survey confirm that the main reason for students fornot completing the reading tasks is that the reading texts are too difficult for them

to understand How difficult the texts are? And which aspects of the texts preventstudents from grasping the main idea of the text? Let's see in the finding anddiscussion of the next question

2.6.2.1 The Reading Text

The reading text plays the role of the material in reading lesson Throughreading the text, students get the information to do the reading tasks Thus, a goodtext must be succinct but adequate A lot of aspects build up a complete readingtext such as vocabulary, grammar, text type, text content, ect… How does each ofthese above aspects affect readers in the lesson? Let's see in the results of thefollowing question:

With the question "Which reason makes it difficult for students to understandthe reading text?" asking teachers and students, the author get the result asfollowing:

Reasons make it difficult for students

to understand the reading text

Teachers' opinions

(%)

Students' opinions

(%)

1 There are many unknown words 80% 92%

2 There are many new grammar

The results of the survey indicate that the vocabulary is the biggest difficultiesthat most of students face while reading The new grammar structures and theunfamiliar topic and content of the text are also hindrance to students'comprehension And in the new textbook "Tieng Anh 10", the text type do notcause difficult for students at all

To sum up, the results of the survey confirms that when reading the text in thenew textbook "Tieng Anh 10", students encounter so many difficulties that preventthem from understanding the text The difficulties include unknown words, newgrammar structures, and unfamiliar topic and content of the reading text And themain difficulty is the unknown words in the reading text

2.6.2.2 The Reading Tasks

In a reading lesson, students are provided the reading materials In the newtextbook "Tieng Anh 10", the reading material for reading lesson contains a reading

text and the reading tasks going with it After reading the text, students use theinformation to do the reading tasks And the success a reading lesson belongs toresults of doing the reading tasks Thus, the completion of the reading tasksdepends not only on the information from the reading text but also on the readingtasks themselves Thus, reading tasks play an important role in finishing thereading tasks themselves, and in creating the success of the reading lesson.

The result in Table 2.3 shows very clearly the important of the reading tasks incompleting themselves 58% of students say that the difficulty of reading tasksprevents students from completing the reading tasks themselves

Otherwise, some teachers and students complain that there are some readingtexts having too many tasks so students can not complete all reading tasks on time.Thus, reading task itself is a difficulty for students to complete the readingtasks in the lesson The tasks are too difficult or/ and there are too many tasks causedifficulty for students in finishing the reading tasks

In conclusion, the text and the reading tasks cause difficulty for students inunderstanding the text and completing the tasks And the most difficulty in readingmaterials is the vocabulary

2.6.3 Difficulties in Students’ Reading Strategies

Students' reading strategies play an important role in their learningproductivity in the reading lesson As was discussed in chapter 1, students' readingstrategy is an objective factor that affects students' reading success or failure Whatdifficulty do students have in applying their strategies in reading lesson? Let's see

in the following discussion

2.6.3.1 The Ways Students Read the Text

The multiple-choice question "When reading a text, which of the followingways do you often use?" with suggested answers is used to ask students And theauthor gets the result as following:

The ways students read the text Students' opinions

6 Looking at the title/ headline of the reading text 39%

7 Paying attention to the topic sentence while reading 27%

8 Translating the text into Vietnamese 76%

Table 2.5: The ways students read the text

The result of the survey indicates that 26% of students skim the text to getquickly main idea, and only 11% of them choose scanning through the text as theway of reading A large number of students (84%) are in the habit of readingslowly and try to understand every word Translating the text into the Vietnamese

is also an approach that a lot of students (76%) choose while reading The number

of students chooses reading the text aloud and reading the text in silent is quitesimilar with 42% of students read aloud and 41% of students read in silent There isonly 27% of students pay attention to the topic sentence while reading And 39students (39%) is the number of students looking at the title/ headline of the textbefore reading

It is sure that the students read effectively or not partly depend on the readingstrategies they use However, the result finding in table above confirm that most ofthe students appear to be inefficient readers They use inappropriate strategieswhile reading For these students, understand the text means that they are able totranslate the text into Vietnamese That is why they read slowly and try tounderstand every word in the text They do not know that when reading the textslowly, they will fail in understanding the general meaning of the whole passageand in achieving the reading purposes

The students often rarely pay attention to the title/ headline and the topicsentence of the reading text And the number of students skims and scans the text isthe least

In short, the students utilize inappropriate reading strategies when dealing withthe reading text in the new textbook "Tieng Anh 10" They do not use differentstrategies when they are reading for different purposes And the way they applymost is translating the text to Vietnamese while reading, that's why they readslowly and try to understand important and unimportant words either It isinappropriate reading that strategy partly causes inefficient reading.

2.6.3.2 The Ways Students Deal with the Unfamiliar Words

With the question "What do you do when meeting an unfamiliar word?"asking students, the author get the result as follow:

The ways students deal with unfamiliar words Students' opinions

(%)

1 Stop reading and look the new words up in the

2 Guess the meaning of the new words 16%

3 Ignore the new words 21%

4 Ask friends or teacher 41%

Table 2.6: The way students deal with the unfamiliar words

The table shows that a large number of students (72%) look up the dictionarywhile reading, while only a few students (16%) guess the meaning of the newwords There is a lot of students (41%) asking friends or teacher And 21 students(21%) ignore the new words while reading

The ability to infer the meaning of unknown words from the text as long beenrecognized as an important skill in reading literature However, the findings provethat the students use inappropriate strategies when dealing with unfamiliar words.They depend too much on the dictionary This habit is obviously not good, since, acompetent reader can cope with occasional interruptions, but constantly referring to

a dictionary makes effective reading impossible

There are a few students who can guess meaning of the unknown words This

is a difficulty for students in a reading lesson as one of the important skills in which

the students are trained and practice is guessing meaning of the new words.However, according to the result of this survey, there is a little of students can usethis skill in reading lesson.

While reading a text, it is not necessary to catch the meaning of every word in

it If not, reading becomes a very machinery work However, the table above showsthat there are still 79% of students not ignore unimportant words They look up themeaning of every unknown word they meet while reading Obviously, they aredoing unnecessary thing They do not know that not all words are important Theystill get the gist of the reading passage without knowing every word in it

To sump up, the learners are utilizing not very good strategies for dealing withunknown words They do not guess the meaning of the unknown word, and do notignore the unimportant word, either They constantly stop reading to look up words

in the dictionary while reading This makes them read ineffectively

2.6.3.3 The Ways Students get the Main Idea

The question "What do you do if you are asked to get the main idea whilereading?" is provided to the students And the author gets the results as follow:

The ways students get the main idea Students' opinions

(%)

1 Do not know how to get the main idea 0%

2 Skimming to get the main idea 67%

3 Paying attention to the title/ headline of the text 41%

3 Paying attention to the topic sentence of the text 42%

Table 2.7: The ways students get the main idea of the text while reading

Getting the main idea is a very popular but important skill in reading a text To

do this task, students must have such micro basic skills as skimming, payingattention to the title/ headline and the topic sentence of the text

As was discussed above, skimming is a very popular but important skill ingetting main idea However, the table above shows that although 100% of studentsknow how to get the main idea of the text while reading, there is only 67 students