INTRODUCTION
Statement of the problem and rationale for the study
Teaching a foreign language in general and English in particular requires great knowledge, experiences and efforts
According to Carrell (1984:1), “for many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills, particularly in English as a second or a foreign language” Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because it supports learning in many ways Firstly, reading material is a language input Students given a variety of materials to read have many opportunities to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure and discourse structure Secondly, reading for content information in the language classroom provides students with both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading Thirdly, reading helps students broaden their knowledge of the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying
Researchers believe that teaching productive reading strategies motivate students to read and facilitate reading comprehension (Anderson, 2003; Eskey, 2002; Grabe,
2004) It also appears that good students apply a variety of reading strategies to their learning Therefore, the importance of teaching reading strategies is to not also facilitate students’ reading process but help student enrich their vocabulary and grammar as well
What is more, in the context of the upper secondary school, reading is even more important than other three skills of speaking, listening, and writing The reason is that students have to take the examinations, which are grammar- and reading- based
However, the students’ reading proficiency is not satisfactory
Thus, this study is conducted to investigate the use of reading strategies of the 10 th grade students at Pham Hong Thai high school Although almost all 10 th form students have learnt English since grade 6, many of them do not know or use appropriate reading strategies yet As a result, they can become easily frustrated when they do not understand what they are reading, and they become demotivated
For the above-mentioned factors, the researcher attempted to conduct a study named “A study on students’ use of reading comprehension strategies: A case of 10 th form students”.
Aims and objectives of the studies
Firstly, the research is carried out to investigate the current use of reading comprehension strategies applied by the 10 th form students in Pham Hong Thai high school Secondly, the study is to figure out how to enhance 10 th form students’ reading comprehension Therefore, the research is to seek answers to the following research questions:
1 What are reading strategies currently applied by 10 th form students in Pham Hong Thai high school?
2 How to improve 10 th form students’ reading comprehension?
Significance of the study
Once successfully completed, the study’s findings and discussions are expected to be beneficial to English teachers, the 10 th forms students, the researcher herself as well as other researchers Firstly, teachers of English can recognize the significant benefits, if any, of strategies in teaching reading comprehension Based on the findings, teachers could adapt their current situation of teaching reading so that they could improve their students’ reading comprehension Also, there are some suggested solutions for teachers to prepare an efficient technique to motivate students’ participation in their studying and to teach them how to read effectively Secondly, reading comprehension strategies can provide students with self-study to improve their reading skills and to face reading comprehension difficulties Additionally, this study is expected to bring the researcher an invaluable experience as it provides her with knowledge and techniques to teach reading comprehension strategies Finally, the findings of this study are hoped to offer reliable and updated information for interested and further studies.
Research methodology of the study
This study is conducted as a descriptive study that applied qualitative approach
The qualitative analysis is employed mainly through the process of data collected from a written survey questionnaire delivered to 10 th form students to examine the use of reading strategies, and through an unstructured group interview which is carried out to teachers to find out how to improve 10 th form students’ reading comprehension.
Scope of the study
According to the Ministry of Education and Training’s requirements, high school students have to be taught all four skills including reading, speaking, listening, and writing However, it is because of the large size of the class and test – oriented that English lesson focuses more on reading Thus, this research only put the emphasis on the use of reading strategies of the 10 th form students, who are at the beginning of high school but have just learnt English for more than 5 years.
Design of the Study
The thesis consists of three main parts: introduction, development and conclusion
The Introduction aims at the rationale, the aims, the scope, and also the design of the study
The Development consists of three chapters Chapter 1is Literature Review This chapter reviews some theories of basic concept based on the publications in the field The results from the recent studies for the issues related to the aspects of the subject in the same field are also presented Chapter 2 is the Methodology In this chapter, the author presents the research methodology and the instruments used to collect data from the questionnaire for the students and the unstructured group interview with teachers The procedure of collecting data and the analysis of the survey data is also described carefully Chapter 3 is the Research Findings and Discussion which presents the research’s findings (i.e analysis of data, results) and discussion
In the Conclusion, the author presents the conclusions and limitations of the study as well as some suggestions for the further related studies
This chapter is followed by the References and Appendices.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Reading comprehension
Reading plays an important part in the success of second language learning It is essential to understand the nature of reading
According to Hamer (1989:190), reading is “an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain The eyes receive message and the brain then has to work out the significance of the message.”
When it comes to reading in second language, Williams (1984:2) stated that reading is “a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been written… The reader does not necessarily need to look at everything in a given piece of writing The reader is not simply a passive object, fed with letters, words and sentences, but is actively working on the text and is able to arrive at understanding without looking at every letter and word.”
Anderson (2003:68) offered another definition of reading, which is “a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning The goal of reading is comprehension.”
Although these definitions are expressed differently, they convey the same idea that reading is a selective process and characterized as an active process of comprehending Thus, the reader’s knowledge of the language and knowledge of the world is of great importance to their reading success
In teaching reading, it is necessary for both teachers and students to have a deep understanding about the definition of reading comprehension
Reading comprehension can be understood as the ability to obtain the information as required in the reading text as efficiently as possible Different scholars offered various points of view on the definition of reading comprehension
According to Richard, Thomas and Jere (1987: 143), reading comprehension is a mental process that in the final analysis, only the readers fully understand
Comprehension is what stimulates readers to remember the past experience That knowledge is, then, used in trying to get meaning out of print Meaning does not reside on the printed page but rather in the meaning of the reader
Roe, Stoodt and Burns (1987:2) proposed that “reading comprehension is reconstruction, interpretation and evaluation of what author of written content means by using knowledge gained from life experience”
According to interactive model of reading, comprehension is built up or constructed from knowledge sources which interact with each other on the input from the written page
Comprehension, by definition, is the process of relating new or incoming information to information already stored in memory Readers make connections between the new information on the printed page and their existing knowledge
They must allow the new information to enter and become a part of their knowledge store
Ur (1996:148), on the other hands, stated that effective reading comprehension is a process with the elements as follow:
- appropriate reading comprehension strategies based on the purposes and motivation
- sufficient background information and vocabulary
- close attention to the significant bits
- fairly high speed From these opinions, what comes up as a common point is that reading comprehension is not only simply understanding what is written, but also is what stimulates students to remember from their experiences That knowledge is then used to get meaning out of printed page, but in the mind of the readers, which included facts, emotion, belief and critical evaluation It can be concluded that reading comprehension is the process of understanding what is conveyed in the text That means, the readers (or the learners), as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind these forms.
Reading strategies
Much attention has been paid to the study of reading strategies and there are a number of definitions of reading strategies
According to Cohen (1986), reading strategies refer to those mental processes that readers consciously choose to use in accomplishing reading tasks Supporting this idea, Brantmeier (2002) defined reading strategies as the comprehension processes that readers use in order to make sense of what they read
Oxford, Levine & Crookall, (1989) indicated that reading strategy is reading technique and study skill which makes reading more effective and facilitate learning
They also elaborated that reading strategies is a process used by the learners to improve reading comprehension and overcome comprehension failures
Brown (1990) considered reading strategies as the ways that help learners read more quickly and effectively
Another definition of reading strategies was given by O’ Malley & Chamot (1990) is that the term reading strategies refers to those conscious and unconscious procedures, actions, techniques or behavior that learners employ so as to enhance their comprehension and make up for interpretation problems
In short, although many different definitions were given, what can be come up with is that all the above mentioned definition supported each other What is more, reading strategies can be defined as the ways show readers how to manage their interaction with the written text to comprehend and learn new information from the reading texts effectively
Researchers in reading strategy studies have utilized different strategy types when categorizing reading strategies
Block (1986) and Carrell (1989) categorized reading strategies they found into general or global strategies and local strategies Whereas local strategies constitute a category of decoding strategies, global strategies are related to top-down types of reading, including getting the gist of a reading, utilizing background knowledge, and being aware of text organization
According to Barnett (1988), this process may involve skimming, scanning, guessing, recognizing cognates and word families, reading for meaning, predicting, activating general knowledge, making inferences, following references and separating main ideas from supporting ones
Oxford (1990) identified six components of reading strategies as follows:
- Guessing the meaning of new words
- Self – monitoring There are other scholars who support Oxford’s classification of reading strategies such as Grellet (1986), Kristin, Leah, & Soro (2009) and Smith (1994) Each of the strategies is as below:
Prediction refers to the technique of using the readers’ prior knowledge to guess the meaning or the message of the text from the topics, pictures, key words, or constructions It is one of the most effective factors that motivate students to read and understand the meaning of the context (Oxford, 1990)
Skimming refers to the technique of reading passages quickly in order to get its gist In skimming, readers do not look for specific information but only for general information (Grellet, 1986)
Scanning is quite similar to skimming in that both of them require a quick glance of a text The difference is that in skimming, readers try to get the general or main information of the text but in scanning, the readers would like to obtain specific information In scanning technique, readers are looking to find particular information – the answer to his/her questions
Inferring refers to activities of reading between the lines which means that readers need to know how to get the message from the words and sentences in a text So, inferring is defined as the interaction between words in a sentence/phrase or between sentences or phrases (Kristin, Leah, & Soro, 2009)
Guessing the meaning of new words
Guessing the meaning of new words helps readers to read and understand text quickly because difficult words usually create problems for students and are obstacles in reading comprehension (Smith, 1994)
This strategy allows readers to regulate their reading Awareness of using this strategy helps learners to solve their problems in reading
On the other hand , Anderson (1999) divided reading strategies into six sub types including (1) A activate prior knowledge, (2) C cultivate vocabulary, (3) T teach for comprehension, (4) I increase reading rate, (5) V verify reading strategies, (6) E evaluate progress
In conclusion, different scholars classified reading strategies using different terms, and not in all contexts that learners can apply all the above mentioned reading strategies
They rather base on the purpose of reading to utilize one/ some/ or all of them to read
Hence, the importance of reading strategies should be aware of
Reading strategies are important as they help readers to reach their reading goals and achieve good results in reading (Block, 1986) As such, students or readers who do not use any strategies in reading usually face difficulties in reading comprehension
Regarding the importance of reading strategies, readers often encounter problems in reading the text and have difficulties in understanding the meaning of the context but reading strategies help them in learning foreign language and reading comprehension In fact, students will be able to relate newly acquired information to their prior knowledge in context areas which is an essential part of reading comprehension skill
According to Dehnad (2005), reading strategy provides learning opportunities, facilitates learning and recalling of information as well as strengthening the reading comprehension ability of language learners Learners need to be explicitly taught how to properly use reading strategies to monitor their reading comprehension Through the employment of reading strategy such as meta-cognitive instruction in English class, EFL learners will be able to improve their reading comprehension and experience a higher level of competency which will further motivate them to read on a regular basis (Block,
Chamot (2005) stated that students have their own preference of strategy, but in order to become motivated and selective strategy users, EFL learners should self monitor their reading strategy In other words, EFL learners need to consciously know what and when to apply appropriate reading strategy when comprehension fails
All in all, it can be denied that reading strategies are of great importance towards second language learners Hence, students should be exposed to multiple reading strategies as well as the appropriate use of those strategies for better results In addition, students should be taught to become more aware of their own reading behavior and the processes involved in reading to employ the reading strategies effectively
This study adopted Oxford’s classification of reading strategies.
Teaching and learning reading strategies
As acknowledged by many researchers, teaching second or foreign language readers how to use strategies should be part of every reading lesson
Learning reading strategies refers to any sets of activities, stages, programs, or techniques that help students to keep, achieve, or evaluate information (Wenden &
Rubin, 1987) Teachers can help students learn when and how to use reading strategies in several ways
Firstly, teachers can model the strategies aloud, talking through the processes of predicting, skimming, scanning, inferring, guessing the meaning of new words and self- monitoring This shows students how the strategies work and how much they can know about a text before they begin to read word by word
Predicting: using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content
Skimming: a process of speed reading for getting general meaning: quickly getting the gist or overview of a passage or book
Scanning: looking through a text very rapidly for specific information
Inferring: finding clues and add those clues to what have been known or read based on prior knowledge
Guessing the meaning of new words: using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up
Self – monitoring: checking comprehension during reading
Secondly, teachers should allow time in class for group and individual to preview and predict activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading Allocating class time to these activities indicates their importance and value
Another way teachers can utilize is using cloze exercises to review vocabulary items This helps students learn to guess meaning from context
Last but not least, teachers are advised to encourage students to talk about what strategies they think will help them approach a reading assignment, and then talking after reading about what strategies they actually used This helps students develop flexibility in their choice of strategies
As regards students, they need to figure out the purpose for reading Additionally, they should activate their background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate reading strategies Next, they should select strategies that are appropriate to the reading tasks and use them flexibly and interactively
Finally, students have to check comprehension while reading and when the reading task is completed Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistencies and comprehension failures, helping them learn to use alternate strategies
It can be concluded that when students use reading strategies, they find that they can control the reading experience, and they gain confidence in their ability to read the language
A considerable number of studies examined the comprehension strategies that second language readers apply to process a text Obviously, the participants were of many different ages, levels and backgrounds Furthermore, the investigators used a variety of research method and tasks to examine strategy type and frequency of strategy use including think-aloud reports, interviews, questionnaires, observations and written recalls
1.4.1 Foreign research on reading strategies
In a second-language study, Hosenfeld (1977) used a think-aloud procedure to identify relations between certain types of reading strategies and successful or unsuccessful second language reading The successful reader, for example, kept the meaning of the passage in mind while reading read in broad phrases, skipped inconsequential or less important words, and had a positive self-concept as a reader The unsuccessful reader on the other hand, lost the meaning of the sentences when decoded, read in short phrases, pondered over inconsequential words, seldom skipped words as unimportant, and had a negative self-concept
Carrell (1989) carried out the research with two groups of students: the Spanish- speaking group and English- speaking group The instrument was questionnaires to find out the relationship between the reading strategies used by first and second language learners and their reading ability The results indicated that the perception of strategies between good L1 readers and good L2 readers had some differences The Spanish- speaking learners of English perceived global or top down strategies more effectively, whereas local or bottom-up strategies were associated with English- speaking learners’ reading ability in the L2
Anderson (1991) investigated the differences in reading strategy use by adult second language learners The results revealed that both high and low scoring readers appeared to be using the same kinds of strategies while answering the comprehension questions; however, high scoring students seemed to be applying strategies more effectively and appropriately
Block (1992) investigated the comprehension monitoring process used by first and second language readers of English The subjects were 25 college freshmen and consisted of proficient and non-proficient readers of English While reading an expository text, the participants were asked to think aloud or more specifically, to "say everything they understood and everything they were thinking as they read each sentence" (Block, 1992:
323) The results indicated that when facing a vocabulary problem, proficient ESL readers used background knowledge, decided on whether the word contributed to the overall meaning of the passage, reread the sentence and used syntactic clues The meaning-based strategies are classified as global behaviors On the other hand, non- proficient ESL readers focused on identifying lexical problems and did little to figure out the meaning of the words
Sugirin (1999) used a multi-method study to explore the comprehension strategies of EFL readers The research methods used were think-aloud protocol analysis, retellings, a reading comprehension test, in-depth interviews and casual observations The results indicated that there were noticeable gaps among the participants in the degree of comprehension and the strategies used Additionally, the subjects were found to share characteristics of both poor and good readers In the think-aloud activity, they skimmed the whole text at the beginning although they were instructed to read it sentence by sentence, which indicates that their strategies follow top-down processing, considered a characteristic of good readers’ strategies
Researches on reading strategies
The previous chapter has provided a necessary theoretical background for the present study This chapter presents the methodology used for the data collection and analysis in the study It starts with setting of the study and the description of the participants It then describes data collection instruments and analysis procedures of the study
2.1 An overview of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks)
The English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks) was written by a group of lecturers of ULIS (VNU, Hanoi) and published in 2006 The syllabus of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” is the continuation of that of the textbooks at secondary schools
According to the Ministry of Education and Training, by the end of the 10 th form students are expected to achieve the following:
- Listen for the main ideas or for specific information of a monologue or a dialogue with the length of 120 - 150 words of the topics they have learnt
- Exchange information in English at a simple level about the situations relating to the topics they have learnt
- Comprehend passages of appropriately 190 - 230 words about the topics they have learnt
- Understand the main ideas of the text or understand the text in detail Develop vocabulary comprehension: gap - filling, matching, etc
- Write paragraphs (of about 100 - 120 words) relating to the topics they have learnt according to a model or with prompts
It can be seen that although students have learnt English for many years (may be since secondary school); they come from different schools with different teaching methods Therefore, their levels and proficiency also vary Additionally, in such context of large class size and short period of time, it is likely that not all students can achieve the goals, and there are differences between students.
THE METHODOLOGY
An overview of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks)
The English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks) was written by a group of lecturers of ULIS (VNU, Hanoi) and published in 2006 The syllabus of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” is the continuation of that of the textbooks at secondary schools
According to the Ministry of Education and Training, by the end of the 10 th form students are expected to achieve the following:
- Listen for the main ideas or for specific information of a monologue or a dialogue with the length of 120 - 150 words of the topics they have learnt
- Exchange information in English at a simple level about the situations relating to the topics they have learnt
- Comprehend passages of appropriately 190 - 230 words about the topics they have learnt
- Understand the main ideas of the text or understand the text in detail Develop vocabulary comprehension: gap - filling, matching, etc
- Write paragraphs (of about 100 - 120 words) relating to the topics they have learnt according to a model or with prompts
It can be seen that although students have learnt English for many years (may be since secondary school); they come from different schools with different teaching methods Therefore, their levels and proficiency also vary Additionally, in such context of large class size and short period of time, it is likely that not all students can achieve the goals, and there are differences between students
The English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” is designed under theme- based approach with16 units covering six topics Topic one is “You and Me” consisting of unit 1 (A day in the life of ), unit 2 (School talk) and unit 3 (People’s background) Topic 2 is about
“Education” which includes unit 4 (Special education), unit 5 (Technology and you), and unit 6 (An excursion) Topic 3 is “Community” comprising unit 7 (The mass media) and unit 8 (The story of my village) Topic 4 is about “Nature and Environment” (Unit 9 - Undersea world, 10 - Conservation, and 11 - National parks) The next topic is
“Recreation” (Unit 12 - Music, 13 - Films and cinema, 14 - The world cup) People and Places (Units 15 Cities, 16 Historical places)
There are five parts in each unit arranging in equal order as follows: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing, and Language focus Each part is carried out in a period
(45 minutes) The aim of the arrangement is to help students to practice four macro-skills as much as possible In addition, there is a “Test yourself” after every two or three units
The objectives of the “Test yourself” is to examine how well students have achieved in the previous units The “Test yourself” is constructed as follows: Listening, Reading, Grammar and Writing
Reading is the beginning part of each unit The aims of this is that through reading and through developing reading skills such as scanning, skimming, etc the students are provided with language input Therefore, students can speak, listen and write about the things relating to the theme in the next parts
Hence, it is essential for students to have good reading strategies to learn other skills Due to the scope of the study, below are the characteristics of reading part in the textbook
2.1.3 Characteristics of reading part in the textbook
In reading part, there is always a passage whose topic relates to other three skills
It is designed with three parts including “Before you read” (pre-reading), “While you read” (while-reading) and “After you read” (post-reading)
“Before you read” often gives questions with clear and beautiful pictures to lead in the topic of the text In “While you read” (While - reading) of each unit, there are two or three tasks with its own aim Students often have to scan for specific information and skim for general ideas By doing the tasks with such reading strategies, students can be able to enhance their reading skills “After you read” also provides useful activities for students and helps students revise what they have learnt from the passage
Obviously, various topics in the reading texts are beneficial for reading comprehension development However, sometimes students struggle to understand the reading texts because some passages have got new words and grammatical structures
Thus, in order to understand the reading passages, the teachers have to provide students with reading strategies, guidance, and support
In conclusion, reading part helps students improve mainly scanning and skimming strategies, so they haven’t learnt all of the reading strategies well.
Objectives and method of the study
The research was carried out to investigate the current use of reading comprehension strategies applied by the 10 th form students in Pham Hong Thai high school and find out how to enhance 10 th form students’ reading comprehension
Therefore, the research was to seek answers to the following research questions:
1 What are reading strategies currently applied by 10 th form students in Pham Hong Thai high school?
2 How to improve 10 th form students’ reading comprehension?
To conduct this study, qualitative approach was employed The qualitative analysis was employed mainly through the process of data collected from a written survey questionnaire delivered to 10 th form students and an unstructured group interview with 10 th form English teachers at Pham Hong Thai high school.
The participants of the study
The participants of the study consisted of the tenth form students and the tenth form English teachers at PHT high school
As for the students, the samples were 150 tenth form students from four classes chosen randomly as follow:
There are 13 classes of the tenth form students, and each class has approximately
35 students These 13 classes were arranged in ascending order from 1 to 13, then one class chosen after every 3 classes
There are some reasons for choosing these tenth form students as the participants of this study Firstly, the training quality of these students is always of great concern to teachers at PHT high school The findings of the study would provide essential information for teachers to improve PHT students' reading proficiency and hence contribute to enhancing the overall training quality of these students Secondly, they are suitable participants for the study because they have already finished the first semester in English reading Their proficiency levels were generally reported to be between elementary and intermediate, which is of great concern towards the researcher to conduct the study on reading strategies In addition, these students are chosen randomly from four classes, it is feasible for the researcher to have favorable conditions to carry out all the steps of the research process
As regards the teachers, currently, there are five English teachers including the researcher herself being in charge of teaching English to the 10 th form students
However, to assure the objective opinions, only four teachers were chosen to be the participants All of them are energetic and are willing to devote their time and energy to teaching Additionally, all of them have much valuable experience of teaching (more than ten years) Thus, they can be well-aware of students’ needs, their strengths and weaknesses as well as their strategies in learning English reading skill They were interviewed to share their opinions and experience on how to improve their students’ reading comprehension.
Instruments of data collection
The major instruments employed in this study are survey questionnaire for students and semi unstructured group interview for teachers
Questionnaire is printed forms for data collection, which include questions or statements to which the subject is expected to respond Questions can range from those that ask for yes-no responses or indication of frequency to less structured questions asking respondents to describe or discuss language learning behavior in detail It is believed that surveys are the most commonly used descriptive method in educational research There are a few advantages to use survey questionnaire as a research method
"The main attraction of questionnaires is their unprecedented efficiency in terms of (a) researcher time, (b) researcher effort, and (c) financial resources." (Zoltan Dornyei, 2003:
9) Also, Selinger and Shohany (1989) pointed out the following advantages of questionnaires Firstly, they do not take so much time to administer as other procedures
Secondly, since the same questionnaire is given to all subjects at the same time, the data are more uniform, standard and accurate Lastly, questionnaires can be easily quantified because multiple choice questions are used Because of these advantages, questionnaire is employed as a main data collection method in this study
The questionnaire used in this study consisted of two main parts The first one asked for the subjects’ background information including their ages, genders, the number of years learning English, and their self-evaluated English proficiency levels The second part comprised of seven questions, in which two questions used 4 – point Likert scale to figure out the students’ attitude toward reading comprehension and having good reading strategies Two other questions are multiple choice ones which asked for students’ purposes of learning reading and their difficulties in reading a text The next question used 5 – point Likert scale to measure the participants' reading strategies and two last questions were open – ended ones seeking for their use of other reading strategies and their ideas about teachers’ action to help enhance their reading comprehension (See Appendix 1)
2.4.2 Unstructured group interview for teachers
Together with survey questionnaire for students, the researcher also employed an unstructured group interview for teachers as another source of data collection to assure the validity and reliability of the data collected for the study As interviews are interactive, the researcher can “elicit additional data if initial answers are vague, incomplete, off-topic or not specific enough” (Mackey and Grass, 2005:173)
It is noted that the interview was an unstructured interview seeking for their opinion on how to enhance their students’ reading comprehension Additionally, the questions were all open-ended, which encouraged the interviewees to expand upon their answers, clarify some issues; give more details or add additional perspectives around the topic Additionally, the interview was tape-recorded and the important points throughout the interview were noted down, which was useful for later interpretation.
Data collection procedures
The procedure of data collection consists of three main stages as follows:
Stage 1: In this stage, the survey questionnaire was constructed and edited carefully After that, it was modified and piloted with some respondents to ensure that both of their content and structures could be suitable to the samples
Stage 2: The survey questionnaire for the students was administered by the researcher in the classes The aim of this questionnaire was to figure out the current situation of reading comprehension strategies used by the samples The researcher briefly introduced her study, instructed them how to complete the survey questions (Vietnamese version) and got trimmed to help them if needed in order to avoid misunderstanding and achieve the most accurate results
Stage 3: Then, the researcher contacted with four 10 th form English teacher so as to invite them to participate in the interviews It is noted that, all of respondents’ personal information were assured to be particularly kept confidential by the researcher
The interview with the tenth form English teachers was conducted after the data of the survey questionnaire were analyzed The purpose of this interview was to affirm the results as well as to hold the teachers’ ideas of their students’ reading strategies in hope of improve the students’ current strategies and develop new ones Also, the researcher used the recorder to collect and keep needed information and data Similar to the survey questionnaire, the interviewer started to introduce her study, provide the brief explanation of the format of the interview before recording it During the interview, the respondents were encouraged to share their subjective opinions, experiences and give specific examples so that in-depth information could be achieved.
Data analysis procedures
The procedure of data analysis encompasses three main following stages:
Stage 1: After the survey questionnaire had been delivered to the participants, the returned data was combined and cleaned before the analysis As for the open-ended questions, the researcher wrote down the ideas that the respondents had given
Stage 2: In this stage, the data collected from the survey questionnaire was described through pie charts and graphs, analyzed and synthesized
Stage 3: After being transcribed, relevant and important ideas collected from the interview were analyzed and used as illustrations of the data analysis to answer the research questions
In conclusion, this chapter has just discussed the methodology applied in this study including the research design, the participants, the instruments and procedures of data collection and analysis It is severed as an important step to the next part which specifies results and discussions.
RESEARCH’S RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The survey questionnaire results
Research question 1 : What are reading strategies currently applied by 10 th form students in Pham Hong Thai high school?
According to the procedure of data collection, the survey questionnaire was delivered to 150 tenth form students at Pham Hong Thai high school and all of the papers were gathered and cleaned Table 1 summarizes the background information about the participants including genders, ages, number of years learning English and their self- assessed English proficiency
Number of years learning English
Male Female 15 16 17 4 5 6 Elementary Pre-intermediate Intermediate
Table 1: Background Information of the Subjects All of the questions in the survey questionnaire for the students were analyzed to address the first research question
The following pie chart indicates the students’ attitude towards the importance of reading comprehension
0 6.7 very important as important as other skills not important as other skills not important at all
Figure 1: The importance of reading comprehension From the figure 1, it can be concluded that the number of students who considered reading comprehension very important made up to 60%, whereas 33.3% of them thought that is reading equally important to listening, writing and speaking skills However, a certain number of students (6.7%) did not highly appreciate the important role of reading when found it not as important as other skills Meanwhile, it is also noticeable that no one thought that reading is not important at all Thus, it can be concluded that it is important and necessary to learn reading in English
The following chart presents the students’ opinions on their purposes of reading in English
20 40 60 80 100 to reinforce vocabulary & grammar to improve language skills to improve background knowledge to fullfil the compulsory requirements
Figure 2: Students’ purposes of learning reading in English
Regarding the purposes of reading, the students can have more than one choice It is clear from the chart that a massive majority of the respondents (83.3%) admitted that they learnt reading to reinforce their vocabulary and grammar The reason “to improve language skills” ranked second with the proportion of 58.3% of students It was also noticeable that one half of the students (50.5%) included another reason of learning reading is to improve background knowledge, whereas the least percentage of 10.8% of the participants considered reading to fulfill the compulsory requirement as their reading purpose It can be seen that the purposes of reading in English are various Many students think that reading can help them reinforce language skills and improve background knowledge
The next figure highlights the difficulties in reading texts that the students have
0 20 40 60 80 100 new words difficult grammar structures strange topics difficult reading tasks Difficulties
Figure 3: The difficulties in reading a text
As regards the difficulties in reading a text, the respondents can also have more than one choice The collected data shows that the overwhelming majority of the students surveyed (77%) expressed that they have difficulty with new words in the text
Meanwhile, half of the students (57%) considered unfamiliar grammatical structures the most difficult things In contrast, there was only a small number of students (5.35%) who thought that strange topics of the texts were an obstacle to their reading Surprisingly, there was still over one third of the students (38%) assumed that the difficult reading tasks prevent them from reading smoothly The reason may be they have not had good reading strategies
The students’ attitude towards the importance of having good reading strategies is indicated in the following chart
9% very important important a little important not important at all
Figure 4: The importance of having good reading strategies The chart demonstrates that the majority of students surveyed claimed that good reading strategies were very important and important to reading comprehension (48% and 28%, respectively) Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of the respondents (24%) did not agree the importance of having reading strategies while they read The reason may be they are not aware of reading strategies that are used or they are not instructed to utilize them
As regards the respondents' reading strategies, the results were grouped in order to be analyzed more easily These strategies were classified into predicting, skimming, scanning, inferring, guessing meaning of new words, and self-monitoring based on the Oxford’s classification (1990) The results were as follows:
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very often
1 I preview the headings and illustrations to get the main idea of the text before reading
2 I relate my prior knowledge to the information of the texts I am reading
Table 2: Results of predicting strategy The first type reading strategies is predicting including two items
The data from item 1 shows that 37.3% of the respondents never previewed the headings and illustrations to get the main ideas of the text before reading while 40.6% rarely; meanwhile, a small number of the readers (14.1%) applied this strategy often and very often
The choice given by the PHT students from item 2 presents roughly equal proportion It can be seen that 55% of the students rarely employed this strategy and 44.7% sometimes and often did It is also noticeable that no one admitted that they
“never” or “very often” used this strategy
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very often
I skim through the text to understand main ideas of the texts before focusing on details
Table 3: Results of skimming strategy
As can be seen from the results of table 3, the frequency of using this strategy was quite various More than half of the subjects (31.3% often, and 25.5% very often) skimmed through the text to understand main ideas before focusing on details while 10.6% sometimes did that In contrast, there was over one third of the respondents (32.6%) gave the idea of “never” and “rarely” using this type of strategies
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very often
I scan for key words or concepts that are closely related to the questions in order to answer them 31 20.6 19 12.5 21 14.1 38 25.5 41 27.3
Table 4: Results of scanning strategy
Similarly to skimming strategy, it can be seen in table 4 that there was no significant difference in the choice given by the students In general, two thirds of the students (66.9%) indicated that they scanned for key words or concepts that are closely related to the questions in order to answer them On the contrary, there was still a relatively high number of respondents did not applied this strategy (20.6% never and 12.5% rarely)
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very often
I use my knowledge of grammar or vocabulary to help understand difficult parts in reading texts
Table 5: Results of inferring strategy
For inferring strategy, it can be inferred from table 5 that two thirds of the students (68.8%) did not use their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary to help understand difficult parts in the reading text Conversely, 20,6% of the respondents sometime applied this strategy while only 10.6% of them did that often
Guessing meaning of new words
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very often
I guess meanings of new words using the available information
Table 6: Results of guessing meaning strategy
The data in table 6 indicated that more than half of the students (23.3% very often, 18.7% often) employed this strategy, whereas there remained roughly equal proportion (43.4%) of the students that never and rarely did that
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very often
1 I choose reading strategies according to my reading purposes
2 Before reading, I read the comprehension questions to decide important information that should be noted
3 I skip the words that are not essential for comprehending the texts while reading
4 I check if my answers to the questions are correct or wrong after reading
5 I summarize the main ideas of the texts after reading
Table 7: Results of self – monitoring strategy When looking at table 7, it can be seen that self-monitoring comprises 5 items
For item 1, the response showed that an overwhelming majority (88.5%) of the participants hardly chose reading strategies according to their purposes Only a small minority of students (11.5%) assumed that they sometimes or often did that
The results of item 2 showed that a relatively high number of respondents paid attention to reading the comprehension questions to find out the important information to address the question, up to 61.5%
The interview results
Research question 2: How to improve 10 th form students’ reading comprehension?
All the information of the interview was to address the second research question
In this study, the unstructured group interview was conducted with four current 10 th form English teachers at PHT high school The information drawn from this interview was valuable as it helped clarify how to enhance 10 th form students’ reading comprehension
To keep respondents’ personal information confidential, the researcher called four teachers A, B, C and D
The first question asked for their views on the importance of reading comprehension as well as reading comprehension strategies in learning English All of the teachers agreed that they are of great importance as they facilitate the students’ learning not only in reading itself but other skills as well
Next, the teachers were asked to share their opinions on the reading texts in the course book Teacher C responded that “the reading texts cover all the basic topics with reasonable length which are familiar with the students in general” Another teacher – teacher B indicated that “some topics are boring and teachers find it difficult to motivate students to study (unit 1, 2, 4, 7, and 8) Some reading texts are too simple (unit 2, 7), whereas there are some texts really difficult for students to acquire in a lesson such as unit 3, and 15” “However, the requirements towards students are not the same Some reading texts are very easy to read while others are much more difficult with many new words and phrases”, teacher A added
When asked about reading strategies that the teachers often teach their students, three of the interviewees (teacher A, C, and D) shared that they often teach their students how to scan and skim The last teacher – teacher B added that she also teaches her students to guess the meaning of new words in context
Then, the interviewer asked the teachers what they did to motivate their students to read Teacher D told that because the students’ reading ability are various (some are good, some are very poor), the teachers have to organize variety of activities (pair works, group works, and role play) to encourage students to read However, she also shared that she encountered difficulties in applying these activities in reading lessons, namely lack of materials, limited time, large size class, and grammar – based test Another teacher – teacher C came up with the idea that she prepares interesting “warm – up”, and designs authentic materials like magazines or short stories for students to read
Last but not least, the question “What will you do to enhance Ss’ reading comprehension?” was raised
Teacher A responded that her students do not applied reading strategies often and some students even do not understand the importance of reading strategies Therefore, before reading, she would like her students to determine their reading purposes in order to select strategies that are appropriate to the reading task and use them flexibly and interactively as it could significantly enhance their reading efficiency Besides, reading strategies play an integral part in reading comprehension, so she would ask her students to predict, skim and scan and set time for them to do (speed – reading strategy)
As for teacher C, in pre – reading stage, she told that she would collect and define vocabulary terms from the text that would assist students in understanding words by using flash cards This would also help the students increase their vocabulary in a meaningful, relevant way What is more, she would get her students to preview comprehension questions so that they can focus on answering those questions as they read
Regarding teacher B, she gave the idea that improving reading fluency is important for stimulating reading comprehension She told that there are many ways she would apply to help students improve reading fluency such as self-monitoring while reading, enhancing vocabulary and improving reading rate Additionally, she would arrange her students to work in pairs or groups because she thought that using cooperative learning frequently in classes and considering arranging her classroom could facilitate learning, maximize student engagement, reduce class tensions, as well as promote student learning
As regards teacher D, she indicated that she would offer her students a variety of texts covering different topics beside the course book, help her students to activate background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content Additionally, she would let her students check comprehension while reading, and summarize, ask questions, predict things going to happen next based on what they have just read in post reading stage
In conclusion, it is obvious that not only the students but also the teachers are aware of the importance of reading comprehension and reading strategies Additionally, the teachers have to cope with numerous problems when dealing with reading lessons due to limited time, large size class, and grammar – based test, students’ lack of appropriate reading strategies, vocabulary and grammatical structures Another thing was that the three reading strategies which the teachers often teach their students coincided with the ones their students mostly use (skimming, scanning and guessing new words in context)
Therefore, teachers should help their students know how to apply other different reading strategies in their learning When it comes to the teachers views on how to enhance their students’ reading comprehension, it is clear that the teachers’ thoughts corresponded with the students’ wishes All in all, the results of the interview successfully addressed the second research question
This chapter has thoroughly presented the analysis and interpretation of the findings and discussion from the two instruments (survey questionnaire for students and teacher interview) to address two research questions of the study The next part – Conclusion is going to specify the summaries drawn from these findings, limitations of the study as well as recommendations for further studies.
CONCLUSION
Conclusions
This study aimed to investigate the use of reading comprehension strategies of the
10 th form students at Pham Hong Thai high school and to find out the ways to enhance the students’ reading comprehension With regard to the main purpose and research questions of the current study, the researcher made use of qualitative approach consisting of the survey questionnaire with 150 tenth form students and the unstructured interview with four selected teachers to collect data for the study From the data obtained, the researcher came to the conclusions as follows:
Regarding the first research question, the study revealed the tenth form students at Pham Hong Thai high school not only were aware of the importance roles of reading comprehension as well as reading strategies but also wanted to be provided with reading strategies to comprehend the reading texts and to improve their reading comprehension
However, there were no significant differences between good readers and bad readers in the study Most of the students had obstacles regarding new words and grammatical structures in reading comprehension lessons Additionally, the students were in favor of reading comprehension lessons and encouraged to learn reading with the use of reading strategies but they mostly applied skimming, scanning and guessing meaning of new words strategies Some of the students started to use three other strategies including predicting, inferring and self – monitoring unconsciously Besides, there remained some students who started reading at the beginning and went word by word, stopped to look up every unknown vocabulary item
As regards the second research question, the results of the data collected from the unstructured interview showed that the teachers were also aware of the importance of reading comprehension and reading strategies Moreover, the teachers encountered numerous problems when dealing with reading comprehension lessons due to limited time, large size class, and grammar – based test, and students’ lack of appropriate reading strategies, vocabulary and grammatical structures What is more, the teachers taught their students to use mostly skimming, scanning and guessing new words in context strategies in reading comprehension lessons Besides, the teachers also came up with many ideas on how to improve their students’ reading comprehension such as providing students with reading strategies, authentic materials, and other activities during three stages of a reading comprehension lesson
Based on the findings, some pedagogical implications are suggested as follows:
As for teachers, they should help their students know how to apply as many reading strategies in their learning as possible Additionally, the teacher provides suitable activities for the students to focus their attention of specific skills necessary for efficient reading To make the learner more interested in the reading activity, teachers are advised to select the reading texts that were in the range of interest, or topics related to their everyday life In conducting the reading class, teachers are suggested to give a clear explanation before starting to do each step of the reading comprehension activity As there are three main activities in a reading comprehension text including pre-reading stage, while – reading stage, and post- reading stages, the role of the teacher is closely related to these stages At pre-reading stage, the teacher has to make students be aware of what they are going to read and do during the lesson In order to incorporate the 2 pre- reading activities into the reading comprehension, the teachers are advised to be cautious with time allocation The pre-reading activities should not take too much of the class time; rather a larger portion of the class time should be sacrificed to the main reading activities At while- reading stage, the teacher’s main function is to offer help to students if necessary At post- reading stage, the teacher is considered as a guide or an adviser to help the students express their own ideas through their understanding of the text It will help students understand the text efficiently, and at the same time improve considerably their reading skills
As for students, it cannot be denied that students are the key factor to decide the success of a reading lesson and they must take an active role as listener They need to listen to the teacher’s instructions and explanations carefully to find out the way of recognizing information and way of deducing new words or grammatical structures They must also be active and flexible readers to work on their own during the reading process, make full use of the class time to read and do the exercises to achieve a full understanding of the text Furthermore, it is necessary for them to find a suitable reading strategy and use their background knowledge to fulfill their tasks because the significance of the text as well as the information is not always directly stated in printed pages.
Limitations of the study
Although the researcher has devoted herself to conducting this study in a professional manner, it is unavoidable that she encountered some difficulties in the process of implementation, which resulted in the research having limitation Due to the main purpose and the scope of the study, it was conducted on a sample of 150 tenth form students and four tenth form teachers at PHT high school Therefore, the research’s findings and suggestions are only appropriate in PHT context As for other high schools in Hanoi or in other provinces with different conditions from PHT, it is advised to take everything into careful consideration to apply the study’s findings and suggestions.
Suggestions for further study
With the above limitations, there are some suggestions for other researchers to take this issue into consideration and make necessary changes to carry out further studies
Firstly, it would be better if others could extend the range of participants such as all tenth form students at high schools in Hanoi or other provinces so that the situation can be deeply investigated This will help teachers to understand what their students’ expectations, needs and interests and to adjust their teaching
Secondly, as the study focuses only on the use of reading strategies in learning English in general, it is highly recommended other researchers to carry out the study on the use of specific reading strategies such as skimming, scanning, or inferring, etc
Thirdly, other further studies can be carried out to examine the differences between good readers and bad readers or male readers and female readers when they use reading strategies
Last but not least, researchers can conduct other studies which focus on the use of strategies to learn three other skills such as listening strategies, speaking strategies and writing strategies
In summary, this study addressed two research questions and still had some shortcomings Together with the summary of the study’s main findings, the suggestions for further studies on this issue are also presented in this chapter
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APPENDICE Appendix 1 SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS
This survey questionnaire is designed with the aim of getting necessary information for study “A study on students’ use of reading comprehension strategies:
A case of 10 th form students” Please give your opinions to the questions below Your opinions are valuable to the evaluation research and would help improve the material
Your cooperation is highly appreciated
Your years of learning English: 4 years 5 years 6 years Your proficiency level:
PART 2: In completing these questions, please choose the answer by circling the letter next to your choice You could also have more than one choice in some questions or give your own answers
1 How important is reading comprehension?
As important as other language skills (listening, speaking, writing) Not as important as other language skills (listening, speaking, writing) Not important at all
2 What is your purpose of learning reading in English?
To reinforce vocabulary and grammatical structures
To fulfill the compulsory requirements
3 What difficulties do you often have in reading a text?
There are many new words in the text
Grammatical structures are difficult The texts often have strange topics The reading comprehension tasks are difficult
4 How important is having good reading strategies to reading comprehension?
A Little important Not important at all
5 Circle the most suitable option to clarify you use of reading strategies?
1 Never 2 Rarely 3 Sometimes 4 Often 5 Very often
1 I choose reading strategies according to my reading purposes 1 2 3 4 5
2 I preview the headings and illustrations to get the main idea of the text before reading
3 Before reading, I read the comprehension questions to decide important information that should be noted
4 I skim through the text to understand main ideas of the texts before focusing on details
5 I scan for key words or concepts that are closely related to the questions in order to answer them
6 I skip the words that are not essential for comprehending the texts while reading
7 I guess meanings of new words using the available information
8 I use my knowledge of grammar or vocabulary to help understand difficult parts in reading texts
9 I relate my prior knowledge to the information of the texts I am reading
10 I check if my answers to the questions are correct or wrong after reading
11 I summarize the main ideas of the texts after reading 1 2 3 4 5
6 Name other reading strategies that you apply when learning reading? (Please specify)
7 What do you want the teachers do to help enhance your reading comprehension? (Please specify)
Appendix 2 BẢN KHẢO SÁT DÀNH CHO HỌC SINH
Bản câu hỏi này được thiết kế để thu thập thông tin cần thiết cho nghiên cứu
“Việc sử dụng chiến lược đọc hiểu Tiếng Anh của học sinh lớp 10” Chắc chắn rằng không có câu trả lời đúng hay sai, nên hãy trả lời các câu hỏi theo ý kiến của chính mình
Cảm ơn sự hợp tác của em!
PHẦN 1: THÔNG TIN CÁ NHÂN
Số năm đã học Tiếng Anh: 4 năm 5 năm 6 năm Trình độ Tiếng Anh của em (Tự đánh giá):
PHẦN 2: TRẢ LỜI CÂU HỎI Đánh dấu tất cả các đáp án em thấy phù hợp với bản thân mình trong khi học đọc hiểu:
1 Đọc hiểu quan trọng như thế nào?
Rất quan trọng Quan trọng như những kỹ năng khác (nghe, nói, viết) Không quan trọng như những kỹ năng khác (nghe, nói, viết) Không quan trọng chút nào
2 Mục đích đọc hiểu Tiếng Anh của em là gì? Để củng cố từ vụng và cấu trúc ngữ pháp Để cải thiện kỹ năng ngôn ngữ Để mở rộng kiến thức nền Điều kiện bắt buộc
3 Khó khăn em thường gặp phải trong khi đọc hiểu?
Có nhiều từ mới trong bài đọc Nhiều cấu trúc ngữ pháp khó
Các bài đọc thường có chủ đề lạ Bài tập đọc hiểu khó
4 Chiến lược đọc hiểu tốt quan trọng như thế nào đối với đọc hiểu?
Rất quan trọng Quan trọng Khá quan trọng Không quan trọng chút nào
5 Khoanh vào các lựa chọn để cho thấy mực độ sử dụng các chiến lược đọc hiểu em dùng
1 Chọn chiến lược đọc hiểu theo mục tiêu đọc 1 2 3 4 5
2 Xem trước tiêu đề và minh họa để biết ý chính của đoạn trước khi đọc
3 Đọc trước câu hỏi để quyết định thông tin cần thiết 1 2 3 4 5
4 Đọc lướt qua đoạn văn để hiểu ý chính trước khi tập trung vào chi tiết
5 Đọc từ khóa hoặc khái niệm gần với câu hỏi để trả lời chúng 1 2 3 4 5
6 Bỏ qua những từ không cần thiết khi đọc bài 1 2 3 4 5
7 Sử dụng thông tin có sẵn trong bài để đoán nghĩa từ mới 1 2 3 4 5
8 Sử dụng kiến thức ngữ pháp hoặc từ vựng của mình để hiểu phần khó
9 Liên hệ kiến thức sẵn có với thông tin trong bài đọc 1 2 3 4 5
10 Kiểm tra lại xem câu trả lời đúng hay sai sau khi đọc 1 2 3 4 5
11 Tóm tắt ý chính của bài sau khi đọc 1 2 3 4 5
6 Những chiến lược đọc hiểu khác mà em áp dụng? (Hãy ghi rõ)
7 Em muốn giáo viên làm gì để giúp em cải thiện kỹ năng đọc hiểu? (Hãy ghi rõ)
I am conducting a study named “A study on students’ use of reading comprehension strategies: A case of 10 th form students” and your valuable information will help me carry out my study successfully
Now let’s start our interview!
I: First of all, how important is reading comprehension and reading strategies?
Teacher A: We all agree that they are of great importance as they facilitate the students’ learning not only in reading itself but other skills as well
I: “What do you think about the reading texts in the course book?”
Teacher C: the reading texts cover all the basic topics with reasonable length which are familiar with the students in general
Teacher B: I think that some topics are boring and teachers find it difficult to motivate students to study (unit 1, 2, 4, 7, and 8) Some reading texts are too simple (unit
2, 7), whereas there are some texts really difficult for students to acquire in a lesson such as unit 3, and 15
Teacher A: I think the requirements towards students are not the same Some reading texts are very easy to read while others are much more difficult with many new words and phrases
I: What reading strategies do you often teach your students?
Teacher A: I often teach my students how to scan and skim
Teacher C: Yes, me, too Teacher D: So do I
Teacher B: I also teach my students to guess the meaning of new words in context
I: What do you do to motivate your students to read?
Teacher D: because the students’ reading ability are various (some are good, some are very poor), the teachers have to organize variety of activities (pair works, group works, and role play) to encourage students to read However, I encountered difficulties in applying these activities in reading lessons, namely lack of materials, limited time, large size class, and grammar – based test
Teacher C: I often prepare interesting “warm – up”, and designs authentic material like magazines or short stories for students to read
I: What will you do to enhance Ss’ reading comprehension?
Teacher A: my students do not applied reading strategies often and some students even do not understand the importance of reading strategies Therefore, before reading, I will let my students determine their reading purposes in order to select strategies that are appropriate to the reading task and use them flexibly and interactively It could significantly enhance their reading efficiency Besides, reading strategies play an integral part in reading comprehension, so I will ask her students to predict, skim and scan and set time for them to do (speed – reading strategy)
Teacher C, I will collect and define vocabulary terms from the text that would assist students in understanding words by using flash cards in pre – reading stage This helps the students increase their vocabulary in a meaningful, relevant way I will also get my students to preview comprehension questions so that they can focus on answering those questions as they read.