INTRODUCTION
Background
Vocational education has been growing in popularity not only in numerous countries around the globe but also in Vietnam It is considered as an alternative door for students to pursue their dreams rather than higher education Vocational education is a practical approach that prepares people to work in specific occupations, such as engineering, trading, or crafting
Vocational colleges are designed to provide vocational education, which can be distinguished other colleges in the sense that they provide students with job-specific training instead of high concentration on academic training
Consequently, students are well equipped with particular skills required for their specifically selected jobs
Among all vocational colleges in Vietnam, Viglacera Vocational College (VVC) is considered as the most well-known vocational institution in the industry of construction materials production It is an education unity of Viglacera Corporation Established in 1998, Viglacera Vocational College has been the first and only college in Vietnam providing intensive vocational training in the industry of construction materials production VVC and Proskill UK have signed a cooperation agreement in vocational training with the aim to propel VVC to become a leading Vietnamese vocational college in the field of construction materials It can be seen clearly that VVC has been putting efforts in building vocational training programs in compliance with international standards VVC focuses on training the workers of forty subsidiaries in the Viglacera Corporation These students have to simultaneously meet the requirements of studying at the college and working at the sites They have to work on shifts (three shifts per day) to maintain the working lines and to ensure the effective production Therefore, they face ample difficulties in learning as well as doing exercises In class, most of them complain that they are too exhausted to absorb new knowledge, and they want to have interesting easy lessons, which pose a real challenge for the teachers to facilitate their learning
At VVC, English is considered an international language as it has become increasingly popular as a teaching language in Vietnam‟s education
Especially, together with the rapid pace of globalization, it has grown to be an official medium of instruction for many universities More specifically, English is a key to “gain access to the required knowledge that is available, either exclusively or most readily, in English” (Mumby, 1981) In other words, it serves other different specific purposes, which results in significant changes in almost all walks of life and the continuing increase of international communication in these various fields That trend leads to the coming into being of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Being aware of the importance of ESP, teachers at Viglacera Vocational College (VVC) pay more attention to teaching ESP than GE for their students This ESP course aims at providing students with background knowledge and a system of terms related to building materials
However, vocabulary and grammar cause various problems for the students at VVC while they conduct reading activities Many of them find it challenging when they have to embrace a large amount of specialized vocabulary and complicated grammar structures Even when they get accustomed to specialized vocabulary, they still encounter problems with understanding general ideas and specific details The root causes for these obstacles can originate from their study methods, their learning attitudes, the curriculum, and the teaching methods It is assumed that the students can overcome these problems related to vocabulary and grammar by changing their study methods, particularly reading strategies
Reading strategies play a crucial roles in the process of learning and utilizing the language as Carrell (1984) states that “for many students, reading is by far the most important out of the four macro-skills, particularly in English as a second foreign language” The students at VVC indeed need to improve their reading skills which help them make extensive use of academic materials written in English and increase their professional knowledge in their specific or specialized fields.
Problem statement and research contribution
The ability to read English academic materials is deemed to be one of the most essential skills which university students of both English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) need to develop (Levine et al 2000) Reading comprehension has become the heart of reading and its significant not only to academic learning but also to professional success (Durkin, 1993) Nevertheless, numerous students are not well- prepared for reading requirements that are stressed on them When these students are strongly pressed to read academic materials in English, they are more likely to choose ineffective and inefficient reading strategies leading to poor results (Wood et al 1998)
Despite the importance of English reading, previous studies have shown little interest in the topic of reading strategies among vocational college students in Vietnam Many students including those at Viglacera Vocational College have been struggling with reading academic materials entirely written in English The program at this college was originally well designed with attempts to reach the global standards, hence the students are required to prepare themselves to acquire all the knowledge from this program to be certified This raises the demand for a study about their in-class reading behaviors in order to find out how they are handling with ESP texts and what strategies they are currently using to read English materials
This study makes an important contribution to the existing literature by discovering reading behaviors and reading strategies of vocational students, identifying strategies needed to enhance their reading comprehension as well as proposing an appropriate approach for them to improve their reading skills and achieve successful academic results.
Research questions
The study aims to find answers for the following questions:
● Which strategies do students majoring in building materials at Viglacera Vocational College use to read ESP texts?
● Are there any differences between good and poor readers, male and female readers in terms of their reading strategy use?
Research objectives
● Objective 1: to investigate and analyse reading behaviors as well as reading strategies of the students at Viglacera Vocational College
● Objective 2: to recommend appropriate strategies for students to improve their reading skills
● Objective 3: to identify differences in the use of reading strategies between good and poor readers, male and female ones.
Research scope
The study focuses on 120 students at three ESP classes majoring in building materials at Viglacera Vocational College The study then attempts to investigate the current reading strategies of ESP students at Viglacera Vocational College and to identify the effective reading strategies that they should follow.
Research methodology
In this study, the author conducts a survey to collect information related to reading strategies of students in the vocational college Afterwards, she uses SPSS software to analyse their reading behaviors.
Thesis structure
Chapter 1 introduces the research background, identifies the practical and theoretical problems, clarifies the research questions, research objectives, research scope and methodology, as well as describes the research structure
Chapter 2 presents the literature review which is relevant to the research topic in order to have the basic knowledge including theories and empirical studies, then illustrates the theoretical framework to support the research
Chapter 3 demonstrates the research design, the method of data collection and data analysis, and research limitations
Chapter 4 shows the result of measurement and regression models, conducts comprehensive analyses and discusses important findings
Chapter 5 draws some conclusions and suggests some recommendations related to reading strategies for students at vocational colleges.
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter, firstly, presents important definitions related to the topic reading and reading comprehension Subsequently, it analyses the reading process and several common reading strategies Additionally, this chapter highlights special features of English for specific purposes and ends with the existing literature of reading strategies
Reading is one of the four skills that students should learn and care of
At college, students have always many different reading materials to read, such as: textbooks, articles, stories and so on Reading is more beneficial to them during their study because it enables them to acquire many things about the knowledge of language and understanding different subject areas
Scientists have different opinions about the definition of reading Goodman
(1971) defines reading as a process in which readers re-organise in the most possible way the messages that the authors decode in visual performance In the meantime, Harmer (1989) describes that reading is a mechanical process in which the eyes receive information and the brain works to find out the meaning of the message Similarly, Smith also states that reading is a process to understand thoughts of the authors Generally, from different perspectives, researchers have strived to identify the basics of reading, among which, readers, reading process or conveyed messages are strongly emphasized
Reading comprehension plays an essential role in teaching and learning languages According to researchers‟ viewpoints, reading comprehension is the ability to obtain information from the texts or documents accurately and effectively There are three dominant factors influencing reading comprehension, namely texts, foundation knowledge of readers, and related context
Swan (1975) affirms that those people who have good reading ability can obtain the most information from the texts with their own limited knowledge On the other hand, Grellet (1981) points out that reading comprehension or understanding a text means decompressing necessary information in the most effective way Although researchers have various points of views, all of them propose that reading comprehension is the process in which readers can realize visual images of the texts and understand implications behind them
According to many other psychologists, there are two reading processes for comprehension, known as bottom-up and top-down process In the bottom-up process, the students start to read documents from the smallest units of language such as letters, words, phrases, sentences, and try to understand the meaning of these units before combining them into paragraphs or the whole texts This is a method to contemplate details, which helps readers clarify ideas, determine specific locations of the details and provide answers to their questions On the other hand, the top-down process emphasizes interactions between readers and documents rather than understanding basic units of the documents such as letters, words, phrases and sentences As a result, the readers need to prove their positive roles in the reading process by utilizing their own knowledge about the reading topic, estimation and expectation towards the documents Also, it is critical that the readers should show their motivation, care and attitude to the contents of documents This is one method to get the general ideas and important information of the documents
Some opinions appreciate the role of the top-down process in reading comprehension more than the bottom-up one Though the top-down has a dominant impact on reading comprehension, it does not necessarily mean the bottom-up is not valuable As a matter of fact, readers have to combine these two processes so as to ensure accuracy and timeliness of information
Learners need to achieve comprehension in reading through applying appropriate and effective reading strategies In other words, the appropriate use of reading strategies will always facilitate the ability of getting meaningful reading easily Reading strategies include, for example, prediction, skimming, scanning, inferring, guessing the meaning of new words, and self monitoring which will enable the learners to achieve comprehension in reading successfully without facing any problems The current explosion of research in second language reading has begun to focus on readers' strategies Reading strategies are of interest for what they reveal about the way readers manage their interaction with written text and how these strategies are related to text comprehension Research in second language reading suggests that learners use a variety of strategies to assist them with the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of information (Rigney,
1978) Strategies are defined as learning techniques, behaviors, problem- solving or study skills which make learning more effective and efficient (Oxford and Crookall, 1989) Furthermore, reading strategies may involve evaluating content, finding an association between the text and previous knowledge or experience, asking and answering questions relevant to the text, identifying key words, using grammatical analysis to determine the various components of the sentences, skipping, rereading, paraphrasing and summarizing (Almasi, 2012)
Reading strategies demonstrate how the readers perceive a task, what textual signals they tend to realize, how well they understand what they read, and what they do when they do not actually understand (Block, 1986)
Reading strategies can be simple, such as reviewing difficult sections and inferring the meaning of unknown vocabulary Rather, reading strategies can also be comprehensive, such as summarizing and connecting what is written in the documents to the knowledge of the readers (Janzen, 1996) The existing literature has evidenced that reading strategies can be instructed to students, and when these reading strategies are provided, reading skills of students are improved (Carrell, 1985; Pearson and Fielding, 1991; Brown and Palincsar, 1989) According to Brown and Palincsar (1984), the reading procedure encompasses four strategies, namely summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting
Basically, reading strategies are divided into two major categories which are cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies The cognitive strategies help the readers in constructing and understanding the meaning and implication from the texts The metacognitive strategies aid in monitoring and regulating the cognitive strategies (Devine, 1993 and Flavell, 1981) To illustrate, skimming a text to get fundamental information is a cognitive strategy, while evaluating the effectiveness of collecting information from the text is a metacognitive strategy (Devine, 1993) In the context of second language learning, a distinction can be made between strategies that make learning more effective, versus strategies that improve comprehension The former are generally referred to as learning strategies in the second language literature Oxford (1989) provides a useful classification scheme of the various strategies used by the second language learners This involves:
(1) Cognitive strategies: these are used by the learners to manipulate language This category covers note-taking, formal study of the specific aspects of the target language, summarizing, paraphrasing, predicting, analyzing and using context clues
(2) Memory strategies: these help the reader remember information through creating mental pictures, grouping and associating
(3) Compensation strategies: involve activities such as guessing while reading, or using dictionaries
(4) Meta-cognitive strategies: these involve activities done by the learner to plan, arrange, and assess their own learning
(5) Affective strategies: these include self-encouraging behavior to reduce anxiety
(6) Social strategies: which cover cooperation with peers and asking for correction and feedback
English for Special Purposes (ESP) has been defined with the different emphasis on the variety of elements that characterize ESP by a large number of researchers and scholars First, Pauline Robinson (1991) states that ESP is for study in specific discipline or as a school subject She also accepts that ESP courses are generally constrained by a limited time period That is, the objectives must be achieved within a short period of time, the learners must get the required level of linguistic competence Another characteristic is that ESP is taught to adults in homogenous classes in terms of their work or specialist study This is obvious when English for Occupational Purposes is considered This type of ESP is for people who are in occupation or about to take up employment Hutchinson and Walters (1987) define ESP as a language approach in which contents and method of teaching is decided depending on particular demands of learners Likewise, Strevens (1988) shares the same view that ESP is to study English for a specific major and it is used as a foreign language From these definitions, it can be concluded that the purpose of reading ESP is to develop reading skills for the learners in the fields related to their interests
Robinson (1991) also divides ESP into two main areas: English for Academic Purposes (EPA) and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) by a tree diagram as follow:
The diagram presents a useful division of courses when they take place
These distinctions are very important as they will affect the degree of specificity that is appropriate to the course In short, studying various ways of classifying ESP will provide the teachers with an overall picture of the group of learners they are going to work with
2.5 Existing literature of reading strategies
METHODOLOGY
This chapter commences with depicting the research design of how the researcher would undertake to answer the research questions and achieve the research objectives, including research philosophy, approach, and method
Then, it demonstrates methods of data collection and data analysis Finally, research limitations are taken into account
Research philosophy is conceptualized as the improvement of the research background, research understanding and its essence (Saunders et al
2012) Research philosophy is also specified by research model It is required to choose the appropriate philosophy for the research development On the nature and objectives of this study, the philosophy of positivism is employed as the foundation of the research The author observes practical reading behaviors of students at a vocational college in Viet Nam Then, the data is used to analyse percentage and fequency in reading strategies of students so as to give an overall picture of what is going on with the reading styles of vocational students
Research approach provides the direction which the researcher would go through to undertake the study Research approach can be classified into three main categories, namely deduction, induction, and abduction The choice of approaches depends upon the questions and objectives of a specific study
This study is fundamentally based on deductive approach After reviewing theoretical and empirical literature, the author realizes important reading strategies, they are inputs for designing the survey and finding appropriate strategies for vocational students
In this study, the author would employ a quantitative method in order to give the right answer to the research questions which are analyzing reading strategies of students at Viglacera Vocational College Ultimately, an SPSS software is used to analyzed the data of the questionnaire
The sample of the study involves 120 learners from several different construction materials classes at VVC The learners are registered in compulsory ESP courses which aim to help them pursue their study to get knowledge about their professional aspects This group of students have already learned English from four to seven years (four years at secondary school and three years at high school) plus one term of General English at the first year of college Their ages range between eighteen and thirty years, and they all speak Vietnamese as their first language
The instrument which is employed to collect primary data is questionnaire The questionnaire consists of two parts The first part is intended to provide background information about the subjects, such as gender, age, years of studying English The second part of the questionnaire aims to identify the reading strategies claimed to be commonly used by the participants while reading a ESP text This part is classified under three phases of reading: Pre-reading, While-reading, and Post-reading This questionnaire is administered at the beginning of the experiment Each question is asked for a range of answers, ordering as “always”, “usually”,
“sometimes”, “rarely” and “never” In the phase of Pre-reading, four strategies are included to ask the respondents, which are relating the title and illustration to the text, skimming the text, reading the topic sentence, and thinking about previous knowledge In the phase of While-reading, eleven strategies are used to ask the respondents: looking up every unknown word in the dictionary, checking the dictionary only for important words, contextual guessing, using grammatical clues to guess the meaning, skipping unknown words, rereading a sentence if not understood, translating the text word-for- word, thinking aloud when reading, taking notes on important points, making guesses about what will come next based on information already given, and relating the text to the readers‟ background knowledge In the phase of Post- reading, five strategies are included to ask the respondents, namely classifying words according to meaning, classifying words according to grammatical categories, summarizing the main points in the text, rereading the text to make up for comprehension failure, and rereading the text to remember the important points
Data collected through the method is analyzed quantitatively using an SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) computer program
Frequencies and percentages are calculated straight away for all Questionnaire items The results are then presented in the form of frequencies and percentages These statistics are then used to help in comparing the self- reported data generated through the Questionnaire with the actual reading process in terms of reading strategy use
The results of the analysis data is presented into three strategies: Three strategies of the Questionnaire: (1) Pre-reading strategies, (2) While-reading strategies, (3) Post-reading strategies They are all presented into frequencies and percentages.
ANALYSES AND FINDINGS
This chapter describes the analysis of data followed by a discussion of the research findings The findings relate to the research questions that guided the study Data are analyzed to identify, describe and explore features, percentages and frequencies of the answers of the students
4.1 Descriptive statistics of the respondents
Table 4.1: Descriptive statistics of the respondents
Regarding the sample, 62.5% of the respondents are males and 37.5% of the respondents are females, which means that more than 60% of survey answers are led by the perception of male students about reading Students at the age of 18 – 22 years old account for a higher percentage than students at the age of 23 – 30 years old, being 59.2% and 40.8% respectively Most of them show weak interests in reading making up for 67.5% of the total Only
39 out of 120 students have strong interests in reading, and this number takes up 32.5% of the total In terms of reading proficiency, about half of the students have normal level of reading comprehension Meanwhile, there are 31% of students with good reading proficiency and 37% of poor proficiency
In this study, I would like to consider 43.3% of the students with normal reading proficiency as those of low propifiency so that the study emphasise on the differences between good and poor ones
Gender Age Reading interest Reading proficiency
Descriptive statistics of the respondents
Male Female 18-22 23-30 Strong Weak Good Normal Poor
4.2.1 Reading strategy use of vocational students
Table 4.2: Frequency of using reading strategies
Relating the title and illustration to the text 4.78 0.54
Looking up every unknown word in the dictionary 2.02 0.92 Checking the dictionary only for important words 3.83 0.99
Using grammatical clues to guess the meaning 2.21 1.07
Rereading a sentence if not understood 3.96 0.87
Translating the text word-for-word 2.57 1.28
Taking notes on important points 3.53 1.07
Making guesses about what will come next based on information already given
Relating the text to background knowledge 3.22 0.99
Classifying words according to meaning 2.59 1.22 Classifying words according to grammatical categories 2.17 1.01 Summarizing the main points in the text 3.83 0.90 Rereading the text to make up for comprehension failure 3.99 1.03 Rereading the text to remember the important points 4.24 2.81
Each strategy is rated with a five-point Likert scale which ranges from 1 implying “never use” and 5 implying “always use” The students are required to remark as 1 to 5 according to their frequency of using the strategy A higher mean value indicates a higher frequency of strategy usage Following frequency ranking of Sheory and Mokhtari (2011), strategies having means above 3.5 are in the group of high use, strategies having means between 2.5 and 3.49 are in the group of medium use, and those strategies having means below 2.5 are in the group of low use
There are ten reading strategies in high use with mean values from 3.5 to 4.78, including Relating the title and illustration to the text (M=4.78), Reading the first sentence (M=4.70), Skimming (M=4.64), Rereading the text to remember the important points (M=4.24), Rereading the text to make up for comprehension failure (M=3.99), Rereading a sentence if not understood (M=3.96), Checking the dictionary only for important words (M=3.83), Summarizing the main points in the text (M=3.83), Skipping unknown words (M=3.55), and Taking notes on important points (M=3.53)
Additionally, some reading strategies are in medium use with mean values ranging from 2.57 to 3.41, namely Thinking about previous knowledge (M=3.41), Thinking-aloud when reading (M=3.23), Relating the text to background knowledge (M=3.22), Contextual guessing (M=2.78), Making guesses about what will come next based on information already given (M=2.75), Classifying words according to meaning (M=2.59), and Translating the text word-for-word (M=2.57) Three reading strategies that students use less often are Using grammatical clues to guess the meaning (M=2.21), Classifying words according to grammatical categories (M=2.17) and Looking up every unknown word in the dictionary (M=2.02)
4.2.2 Differences in reading strategies use by gender
Table 4.3: Reading strategies of female and male students
Relating the title and illustration to the text
Reading the first sentence 4.68 0.57 4.73 0.45 0.594 Thinking about previous knowledge
Looking up every unknown word in the dictionary
Checking the dictionary only for important words
Using grammatical clues to guess the meaning
Skipping unknown words 3.56 0.68 3.53 0.73 0.840 Rereading a sentence if not understood
Translating the text word-for- word
Thinking-aloud when reading 3.19 0.93 3.29 1.04 0.577 Taking notes on important points 3.65 1.01 3.33 1.15 0.112 Making guesses about what will 2.57 1.10 3.04 1.09 0.025 come next based on information already given
Relating the text to background knowledge
Classifying words according to meaning
Classifying words according to grammatical categories
Summarizing the main points in the text
Rereading the text to make up for comprehension failure
Rereading the text to remember the important points
For male students, 11 out of 20 strategies fall in the group of high strategy usage, whereas 6 strategies are in the group of medium usage and 3 strategies are in the group of low use For female students, 9 out of 20 strategies are used with high frequency, while 7 strategies are in medium use and only 4 strategies are in low use
Table 4.3 also shows p-value of which investigates whether there exist significant differences between two groups of male and female students The p-value of higher than 5% fails to reject the null hypothesis that there is no statistically significant difference between two groups It can be seen clearly from the table most of p-values are higher than 0.05, leading to the decision of failing to reject the null hypothesis This implies that most of the strategies are used similarly between male and female students and that gender has no significant effect on strategy usage of students in general However, there is statistically significant difference between male and female students in the use of three strategies, namely Looking up every unknown word in the dictionary (p-value=0.000), Contextual guessing (p-value=0.014), and Classifying words according to grammatical categories (p-value=0.049) Particularly, female students tend to look up every unknown word in the dictionary while reading more often than male students Female students also have higher frequency of classifying words according to grammatical categories after they read academic materials than male students, with their means being 2.40 and 2.3 respectively On the other hand, male students are more inclined to use Contextual guessing strategy than female students, with means of 2.97 and 2.44 respectively
Table 4.4 illustrates the most favored strategies and the least favored strategies between two groups of students For male students, top five favored strategies are Relating the title and illustration to the text (M=4.72), Reading the first sentence (M=4.68), Skimming (M=4.60), Rereading the text to remember the important points (M=4.36), and Rereading a sentence if not understood (M=4.05) Top five least favored strategies of male students are Making guesses about what will come next based on information already given (M=2.57), Classifying words according to meaning (M=2.45), Using grammatical clues to guess the meaning (M=2.29), Classifying words according to grammatical categories (M=2.03), and Looking up every unknown word in the dictionary (M=1.63)
For female students, top five favored strategies are Relating the title and illustration to the text (M=4.89), Reading the first sentence (M=4.73), Skimming (M=4.71), Rereading the text to remember the important points (M=4.04), and Rereading the text to make up for comprehension failure (M=3.93) Top five least favored strategies of male students are Looking up every unknown word in the dictionary (M=2.67), Translating the text word- for-word (M=2.49), Contextual guessing (M=2.44), Classifying words according to grammatical categories (M=2.40), and Using grammatical clues to guess the meaning (M=2.07)
As can be seen that male and female students share common use of top strategies but female students tend to use these strategies more frequently than male students By contrast, male and female students have a striking difference in use of Contextual guessing strategy While male students consider Contextual guessing as a top favored strategy, it is the least favored strategy for female students This study confirms the findings of previous studies that female students are more aware of reading strategies and they use reading strategies more often than male students
Table 4.4: Reading strategies of female and male students ranked by frequency
Male students (nu) Female students (nE)
Relating the title and illustration to the text
4.72 Relating the title and illustration to the text
Reading the first sentence 4.68 Reading the first sentence 4.73
Rereading the text to remember the important points
4.36 Rereading the text to remember the important points
Rereading a sentence if not understood
4.05 Rereading the text to make up for comprehension failure
Rereading the text to make up for comprehension failure
4.03 Summarizing the main points in the text
Checking the dictionary only for important words
3.84 Checking the dictionary only for important words
Summarizing the main points in the text
3.77 Rereading a sentence if not understood
Taking notes on important points
Skipping unknown words 3.56 Taking notes on important points
Relating the text to background knowledge
3.19 Relating the text to background knowledge
Contextual guessing 2.97 Making guesses about what will come next based on information already given
Translating the text word- for-word
2.61 Classifying words according to meaning
Making guesses about what will come next based on information already given
2.57 Looking up every unknown word in the dictionary
Classifying words according to meaning
2.45 Translating the text word-for- word
Using grammatical clues to guess the meaning
Classifying words according to grammatical categories
2.03 Classifying words according to grammatical categories
Looking up every unknown word in the dictionary
1.63 Using grammatical clues to guess the meaning
4.2.3 Differences in reading strategies use by reading proficiency level Table 4.5: Reading strategies of students with different reading proficiency levels
Relating the title and illustration to the text
Reading the first sentence 4.74 0.51 4.69 0.54 0.26 0.610 Thinking about previous knowledge
Looking up every unknown word in the dictionary
Checking the dictionary only for important words
Contextual guessing 2.94 1.15 2.72 1.15 0.82 0.368 Using grammatical clues to guess the meaning
Skipping unknown words 3.45 0.68 3.58 0.70 0.83 0.363 Rereading a sentence if not understood
Translating the text word-for- word
Thinking-aloud when reading 3.35 0.84 3.18 1.01 0.75 0.387 Taking notes on important points 3.58 1.12 3.52 1.06 0.08 0.776 Making guesses about what will come next based on information already given
Relating the text to background knowledge
Classifying words according to meaning
Classifying words according to grammatical categories
Summarizing the main points in the text
Rereading the text to make up for comprehension failure
Rereading the text to remember the important points
For students with high proficiency level, 10 out of 20 strategies fall in the group of high strategy usage, whereas 7 strategies are in the group of medium usage and only 3 strategies are in the group of low use For students with low proficiency level, 10 out of 20 strategies are used with high frequency, while 6 strategies are in medium use and 4 strategies are in low use
Table 4.4 also shows F-statistics and p-value of the test which investigates whether there exist significant differences between two groups of male and female students Surprisingly, all p-values are higher than 0.05, so it fails to reject the null hypothesis that there is no statistically significant difference between two groups This implies that most of the strategies are used similarly between students with high and low proficiency level and that reading level has no significant effect on strategy usage of students in general
CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATION
The study is launched with the objective of identifying the reading strategies commonly used by a sample of ESP students in VVC It draws three important conclusions:
Firstly, most of students at VVC use the following strategies when they read ESP texts: Relating the title and illustration to the text, Reading the first sentence, Skimming, Rereading the text to remember the important points, Rereading the text to make up for comprehension failure, Rereading a sentence if not understood, Checking the dictionary only for important words, Summarizing the main points in the text, Skipping unknown words, and Taking notes on important points Furthermore, these strategies also have high frequency of usage Students rarely use strategies such as using grammatical clues to guess the meaning, Classifying words according to grammatical categories and Looking up every unknown word in the dictionary
Secondly, the study provides similar findings with previous studies that vocational female students are more aware of reading strategies and they use reading strategies more often than male students Most of the strategies are used similarly between male and female students and that gender has no significant effect on strategy usage of students for many strategies However, male and female students have a striking difference in use of Contextual guessing strategy While male students consider Contextual guessing as a top favored strategy, it is the least favored strategy for female students
Finally, there is no statistically significant difference in reading strategies between students with high proficiency level and students with low proficiency level at the sample vocational college Nonetheless, students with high proficiency level show a slightly higher frequency in the use of reading strategies than students with low proficiency level
In conclusion, it has become clear that these ESP students need to improve more appropriate reading strategies to help them cope with the increasing demands of their academic study
Based on the study‟s findings, several recommendations are suggested to improve reading skill and comprehension of students:
First and foremost, while-reading strategies should be developed because they play a decisive role in the reading comprehension of students
There is a serious lack of while-reading strategies in the reading habits of students at VVC Those strategies such as translating the text word by word or looking up every single word in the dictionary should be avoided Good reading strategies should be strengthened, especially Reading aloud when text becomes hard, Reading slowly and carefully for important texts, Predicting or guessing text meaning, Evaluating what is read, Guessing meaning of unknown words, Taking notes while reading, Underlining key information in text, Asking oneself questions, and Resolving conflicting information
Moreover, reading comprehension would be accomplished with the harmonious combination of strategies in all three stages of reading including before-reading, while-reading, and after-reading The fact shows that students at this vocational college only use before-reading (Relating the title and illustration to the text, Reading the first sentence, Skimming) and after- reading strategies (Rereading the text to remember the important points, Rereading the text to make up for comprehension failure) when they read academic materials This leads to an imbalanced reading method
Last but not least, readers and students need to choose appropriate reading strategies for themselves depending on each individual characteristics One reading strategy can be effective to a student, but it can also be ineffective to many other students Therefore, it is an essential step to identify first which strategies among the recommended list fit the students‟ reading habit Choosing suitable reading strategies and applying them to develop every day would eventually enhance reading proficiency and comprehension of students
The author puts great efforts to make sure that the research is processed formally and accurately Nevertheless, it is inevitable to expose to several limitations The first difficulty is that it is impossible to include all students of the vocational college, so only certain students are chosen Another challenge is limited time to complete the whole study Although some limitations exist in the study preparation, the best possible solutions are adopted by the author to ensure the accuracy, reliability, as well as the meaningful contributions of this study
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APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: Official questionnaire (English version)
A SURVEY ON CURRENT READING STRATEGIES OF ENGLISH
I am a student of Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University Hanoi I am now doing thesis graduation with the topic “A survey on current reading strategies of English for Specific Purposes students at a vocational college” Please take a few minutes to answer questions based on your personal perspective All information provided will be secured and ONLY used for researching purposes of this topic
1 You are a student at Viglacera Vocational College
2 You study with English for specific purposes
If you are a student at Viglacera Vocational College and study English for specific purposes, please continue to do this questionnaire
2 What is your age group?
3 Do you have interests in reading?
4 How is your reading proficiency?
Please choose the level of each strategy you commonly use in the pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading stages when you read an English-for-special- purposes texts below by circling suitable number with following rule:
Never Rarely Sometimes Usually Always
No Strategy LEVEL OF AGREEMENT
1 Relating the title and illustration to the text 1 2 3 4 5
5 Looking up every unknown word in the dictionary
6 Checking the dictionary only for important words
8 Using grammatical clues to guess the meaning
10 Rereading a sentence if not understood 1 2 3 4 5
11 Translating the text word-for-word 1 2 3 4 5
13 Taking notes on important points 1 2 3 4 5
14 Making guesses about what will come next based on information already given
15 Relating the text to background knowledge 1 2 3 4 5
16 Classifying words according to meaning 1 2 3 4 5
17 Classifying words according to grammatical categories
18 Summarizing the main points in the text 1 2 3 4 5
19 Rereading the text to make up for comprehension failure
20 Rereading the text to remember the important points
Thank you for your help!
APPENDIX 2: Official questionnaire (Vietnamese version)
CÂU HỎI KHẢO SÁT VỀ CÁC CHIẾN THUẬT ĐỌC CỦA CÁC HỌC VIÊN
Tôi là học viên của Khoa Sau đại học, Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ, Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội Tôi đang thực hiện luận văn tốt nghiệp với đề tài “Khảo sát các chiến thuật đọc tiếng Anh chuyên ngành hiện nay của các học viên tại một trường Cao đẳng nghề” Vui lòng dành một vài phút để trả lời các câu hỏi dựa trên quan điểm cá nhân của bạn Tất cả các thông tin được cung cấp sẽ được bảo mật và CHỈ được sử dụng cho mục đích nghiên cứu của đề tài này
PHẦN 1: CÂU HỎI SÀNG LỌC
1 Bạn là một sinh viên trường Cao đẳng nghề Viglacera
2 Bạn học môn Tiếng Anh chuyên ngành □ Có □ Không Nếu bạn là một sinh viên trường Cao đẳng nghề Viglacera và có học môn Tiếng Anh chuyên ngành, hãy tiếp tục trả lời các câu hỏi dưới đây
PHẦN 2: CÁC CÂU HỎI THÔNG TIN CÁ NHÂN
2 Bạn thuộc nhóm tuổi nào?
3 Bạn có đam mê với việc đọc không?
4 Khả năng đọc của bạn như thế nào?
PHẦN 3: CÁC CÂU HỎI CHÍNH
Hãy chọn mức độ thích hợp cho mỗi chiến lược mà bạn thường sử dụng trước khi đọc, trong khi đọc và sau khi đọc khi bạn đọc các tài liệu Tiếng Anh chuyên ngành bằng cách khoanh tròn vào số thích hợp theo quy tắc sau:
Chưa từng Ít khi Thỉnh thoảng Thường xuyên
Chiến lược MỨC ĐỘ ĐỒNG TÌNH
CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC TRƯỚC KHI ĐỌC
1 Liên hệ tiêu đề và hình minh họa với nội dung bài đọc
4 Nghĩ đến các kiến thức đã có 1 2 3 4 5
CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC TRONG KHI ĐỌC
5 Tra từ điển tất cả các từ không biết 1 2 3 4 5
6 Chỉ tra từ điển những từ quan trọng 1 2 3 4 5
7 Đoán nghĩa theo ngữ cảnh bài đọc 1 2 3 4 5
8 Sử dụng các đầu mối ngữ pháp để đoán nghĩa
9 Bỏ qua những từ không biết 1 2 3 4 5
10 Đọc lại một câu nếu chưa hiểu 1 2 3 4 5
