A STUDY ON ENGLISH READING STRATEGIES USED BY THIRD YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS OF THAI AND MUONG ETHNIC MINORITIES AT TAY BAC UNIVERSITY

  DECLARATION This paper is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education. I confirm that this is my own research, and that it has not been published or submitted for any other degrees. Student’s signature   ACKNOWLEGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the contributions of the following people, without those help and guidance, this thesis would not have been completed. First and foremost, I counted myself very fortunate to have had Nguyen Thai Ha, MEd as my supervisor, and I would like to thank for her patience, corrections, advice and encouragement. Secondly, a special acknowledgement must go to Le Van Canh, MA who suggested the appreciated ideas for this study. Thirdly, I must also express my most sincere appreciation to my colleagues who have helped to gather data, who have had assisted with data analysis, and who have helped by reading and giving useful advice. Especially, I would like to acknowledge the assistance given by Mrs Do Thi Thanh Tra, who has always been a well- wishing friend. Fourthly, I am grateful to the students who participated in this study by answering the questionnaires and doing think-aloud reports and contributed considerably to its success. Lastly, my heartfelt gratitude goes to my loving parents, my siblings, and my husband who have supported me with their patience, encouragement.   ABSTRACT This thesis begins with the premise that learning strategies have been widely accepted as the keys that lead to success in learning a language. A lot of research has been carried out in various contexts to investigate the use of language learning strategies by different learners and the effects of such factors as gender, motivation, age, and so forth on the use of language learning strategies. Reading comprehension strategies have been identified by various researchers in both second and foreign language contexts. However, little empirical research has been conducted to uncover the reading comprehension strategies used by Vietnamese students, especially by students at Tay bac Unuversity (TBU). To address this gap, the present study investigates reading comprehension strategies used by third-year English majors of Thai and Muong ethnic minorities at TBU. The present study investigated the use of reading learning strategies of 12 third year English major students of Thai and Muong minorities at TBU and the possible influence on their choice of strategies by their ethnicity. The use of strategies by Muong and Thai ethnic students at TTBU were assessed and measured by think-aloud reports. The gathered data was analyzed with the help of t-test. The most frequently used strategies were reported were metacognitive, followed by cognitive and social/affective. Besides, Thai and Muong ethnic showed that they were significantly different in the choice and frequency of strategy use. Muong students had more preference for the use of metacognitive and cognitive strategies, whereas Thai used social/ affective strategies more frequently than their Muong ethnic counterparts. These results of the study indicated that ethnicity is a factor that had influence on the use of strategies as the findings of the previous research. Based on the findings some discussion and implications were made along with suggestions for further research.   LIST OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT III LIST OF CONTENTS IV LIST OF FIGURES VIII CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Rationale 1 1.3 Aims of the study 2 1.4 Scope of the study 3 1.5 Significance of the study 3 1.6 Design of the thesis 3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 2.1 Introduction 5 2.2 Language learning strategies 5 2.2.1 Definition 5 2.2.2 Classification of learning strategies 6 2.2.3 Factors affecting the learners’ learning strategy choice 12 2.3 The theory of reading 12 2.3.1 Definition of reading 12 2.3.2 Reading processes 14 2.3.3 Reading strategies 16 2.4 Previous studies on language learning strategies 17 2.4.1 Language learning strategies studies 17 2.4.2 Reading strategies studies 21 2.5 Summary 27 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 28 3.1 Introduction 28 3.2 Research questions 28 3.3 Participants and settings of the study 28 3.3.1 Participants 28 3.3.2 Settings of the study 29 3.4 Instruments 29 3.4.1 Questionnaires 30 3.4.2 Think-aloud reports 30 3.5 Pilot – study 30 3.5.1 Stage 1 31 3.5.2 Stage 2 31 3.5.3 Results of the pilot-study 31 3.6 Data collection procedures 31 3.6.1 Administering the questionnaires 31 3.6.2 Administering the think-aloud reports 32 Coding of data 32 3.7.1 Coding of questionnaire data 32 3.7.2 Think-aloud report data 32   3.8 Data analysis procedures 34 3.8.1 Questionnaire data 35 3.8.2 Think-aloud report data 35 3.9 Summary 35 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS 36 4.1 Introduction 36 4.2. Results of Questionnaires 36 4.2.1 Readers’ attitude to reading comprehension 36 4.3 Results of think- aloud reports 39 4.3.1 Students’ use of reading comprehension strategies 39 4.3.2 Difference in strategy use between Muong and Thai ethnic minorities 43 4.4 Summary 48 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS 49 5.1 Introduction 49 5.2 Discussion 49 5.2.1 Muong and Thai ethnic minorities’ attitude to reading comprehension. 49 5.2.2 Strategy frequency 50 5.2.3 Difference in strategy use between Muong and Thai ethnic minorities 51 5.3. Reading strategies that Muong and Thai ethnic students need to develop 54 5.3.1 Reading strategies that Muong ethnic students need to develop 54 5.3.2 Reading strategies that Thai ethnic students need to develop 55 5.4 Implications 56 5.5 Limitations and further research 59 5.6 Conclusion 60 REFERENCES 62 APPENDIX 1: OXFORD’S STRATEGY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM I APPENDIX 2: QUESTIONNAIRES V APPENDIX 3: READING TASK FOR THINK- ALOUD REPORT VII APPENDIX 4: SAMPLE PROTOCOLS XII APPENDIX 5: A SAMPLE OF THE CODED PROTOCOLS XIII APPENDIX 6: RESULTS OF SAMPLE PROTOCOLS XV APPENDIX 7:RAW DATA XVII   LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS L1: The first language L2: The second language LLS: Language learning strategy Sm: Muong ethnic student RS: Reading strategy St: Thai ethnic student TBU: Tay Bac University TOEFL: Teach of English as a foreign language   LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The background information about the participants 29 Table 2: Coding scheme for the use of reading comprehension strategies 33 Table 3: Thai and Muong ethnic students’ preference to reading comprehension 36 Table 4: The role of reading comprehension to Muong and Thai ethnic students’ learning English 37 Table 5: Factor affecting reading comprehension 38 Table 6: Strategy categories used by Muong and Thai Ethnic readers 43 Table 7: Difference in the use of individual strategies between Muong and Thai Ethnic readers 43 Table 8: Reading strategies that Muong ethnic students need to develop 54 Table 9: Reading strategies that Thai ethnic students need to develop 55   LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Reading comprehension strategy category frequency for Thai and 40 Figure 2: Individual strategy frequency within Metacognitive category for Thai and Muong ethnic students 41 Figure 3: Individual strategy frequency within Cognitive category for Thai and Muong Ethnic Students 41 Figure 4: Individual strategy frequency within Social/Affective category for Thai and Muong Ethnic Students 42 Figure 5: CALLA Instructional Framework 58     CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction This chapter introduces the rationale and the aims of the study. The scope of the study and the significance as well as the design of the thesis will also be presented in this chapter. 1.2 Rationale Reading is considered one of the most important skills which language learners should master, particularly as it helps to build a variety of language expression and structures, widen general knowledge and leads to lifelong learning and improvement in the first and second language skills. “Reading is an essential skill for English as a second/foreign language (SL/EFL) student; and for many, reading is the most important skill to master” (Anderson, 1999). Carrell states (1989) “For many students, reading is by far the most important of four skills in a second language, particularly in a language as a second or foreign language”. This is true for Vietnamese learners who have studied English through reading since English is taught and learned as a foreign language and in non- native environment. But acquiring and mastering this skill is likely to become a big hindrance to many learners while they often find it difficult to exploit this skill in their learning experience. On the other hand, the findings of many ESL/EFL research projects have shown the positive effects of learning strategies to enhance the comprehensibility of learners or to overcome comprehension failures. “The employment of appropriate language learning strategies can result in improved proficiency and greater self-confident.” (Oxford, 1990). The current explosion of research in second language reading has begun to focus on readers’ strategies. These strategies consist of whole range of strategies including skimming, scanning, reading for meaning, guessing meaning of unknown words, recognizing text structures and so forth. Most of the reading strategies research focus on the investigation into reading strategies employed by successful and unsuccessful learners. Less attention was given to the relationship between strategy use and such factors as     gender, age, motivation, and ethnicity. There is a need, therefore, to exam how these factors affect on the use and the choice of reading strategies. Since the early seventies, most research on reading strategies concerned about teaching second language students to use a variety of language strategies to assist them with the acquisition, storage, and retrieve of information in order to read better. This seems to suggest that training students to use reading strategies means training them to become autonomous readers. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to raise learners’ awareness of strategy use. In reality, in reading lessons for English majors at TBU, more was done to link reading comprehension and student background knowledge in order to equip them with strategic learning method. However, these students still find reading is the most challenging skill, and they complain that they do not know how to get the right answers of the reading tasks, how to find the information in the reading texts effectively and so forth. To be their teacher who is interested in teaching the reading skill, I really want to help them to overcome these obstacles and improve their reading comprehension capacity. For all of these reasons, I would like to carry out this study to investigate reading strategies used by third-year English majors identified as Muong and Thai ethnic learners in terms of the frequency of strategy use and strategy choice. It is expected that the findings of this study will be helpful for researcher and other teachers in some ways to exploit appropriate techniques to train students the use of reading strategies and raise students’ awareness of employing suitable reading strategies. 1.3 Aims of the study The study focus on investigating the reading strategies employed by third-year English majors at TBU. Particularly, it examines the effects of ethnicity on the frequency of strategy use and the choice of reading strategies. Thus, others factors that influence on reading strategies and LLS in other skills would be beyond the scope of this paper. [...]... the third- year English majors at TBU The study tried to answer the following questions: 1 What reading strategies are employed by third year English majors of Muong and Thai ethnic minorities? 2 Does the frequency of strategy use differ between Thai and Muong ethnic minorities among the third- year English majors at TBU? 3.3 Participants and settings of the study 3.3.1 Participants Twelve third- year English. .. in general and reading learning strategies in particular including the researchers’ findings relating to definitions of learning strategies and reading, reading strategies, previous studies on language and reading learning strategies, their taxonomies, data collection methods and the factors affecting learners’ choice of reading learning strategies A justification on the basis of the literature review... meaning from context refers to the last strategy, inferencing Obviously, the emphasis of this model is on the cognitive and metacognitive aspects of learning An alternative classification scheme proposed by Naiman et al (1978) consists of five major categories of learning strategies and a number of secondary categories The five-primary classification contains an active task approach, realization of. .. with adult foreign language learners to examine their language learning strategies Data analysis led to their classification of learning strategies with three types: (1) Knowing about the language (relating to what language and learning involves), (2) planning (relating to what and how of language learning), and (3) selfevaluation (relating to progress in learning to the learners’ response to the learning... tasks that require reduction of texts to their gist About strategies, we may know that verbal rehearsal and elaboration of material assist in retrieval, or that prediction of article content based on titles improves comprehension, and so forth Metacognitive awareness therefore, also involves the awareness of whether or not comprehension is occurring, and the conscious application of one or more strategies. .. be a strong relationship between reading strategies used by readers, metacognitive awareness, and reading proficiency In essence, successful readers appear to use more strategies than less successful readers and also appear to be used more frequently Better readers also have an enhanced metacognitive awareness of their own use of strategies and what they know, which in turn leads to greater reading ability... language learning strategies in terms of definitions and taxonomies of LLSs, reading comprehension strategies including definitions, reading comprehension processes and reading comprehension strategies, factors affecting RSs choice and previous studies on language learning strategies Chapter 3, Methodology, is a detailed discussion of the method used to gather and analyze data in this study First, research... of language learning strategies by O’Malley& Chamot (1990) and Oxford (1990) as the key directions to its investigation 2.2.2 Classification of learning strategies Research into what learners do to learn a language has resulted in identification of specific strategies and in attempt to classify them in some ways Language learning strategies have been classified in different systems, such as Bialystok... forms and meaning in their language, they are not afraid of making mistakes, and try to guess what they are not sure for their strong desire to communicate Naiman et al (1978) conducted interviews and observations with 34 successful college students and suggested that language learning strategies form only one part of a broader picture of what constitutes a “good language learner”, i.e what that learner... learner does and what kind of environment facilitates this learning process Also, O’Malley et al (198 5a) investigated the relationship between language learning strategies and success in language development by beginning and intermediate level students in the United States Data were collected by means of interviews and observation The result of the study revealed that metacognitive strategies were used more . learning strategies and a number of secondary categories. The five-primary classification contains an active task approach, realization of language as a means. between Muong and Thai Ethnic readers 43 Table 8: Reading strategies that Muong ethnic students need to develop 54 Table 9: Reading strategies that Thai ethnic