Rationale to the study
Recently, the renovation in education especially in the textbook of 11 th form has brought many achievements but requires innovating in teaching methods of four language skills, among which reading comprehension is regarded as a very important skill, the starting point of each unit Therefore, it is necessary to apply different techniques to help students learn reading comprehension more effectively, in which pre-reading activities hold an important role in motivating students to read and understand the lesson more easily It is a matter of fact that English 11 apart from suitable points still has some unsuitable points Clearly, the textbook is just a tool that helps teachers succeed in language teaching While teaching language, teachers are expected to organize the tasks and activities in order to respond the objectives of the teaching and learning process Nonetheless, the students‟ levels of English are different in various areas in Vietnam Not all students have the same English proficiency in a class while the current English textbooks are compulsory for teaching at all high schools Furthermore, it is a common knowledge that motivation is related to success in second language learning in general and learning reading in particular It is assumed that if the students are motivated, especially from the pre-reading stage, their reading tasks will be completed more successfully and obstacles while reading will not affect to their understanding any longer
Therefore, the research entitled “ An evaluation of pre-reading activities in the new textbook Tieng Anh 11 in motivating and improving students‟ reading performance” is conducted to explore not only the current situation of adapting pre- reading stage at Dao Duy Tu high school in Thanh Hoa province but also the positive results and its effects on student‟s motivation as well as reading performance Hopefully, the paper is also to offer some practical suggestions for not only teachers but also textbook writers or designers to adapt pre-reading activities in reading classes more effectively.
Aims and objectives of the research
The study is carried out with the aim to analyze pre-reading activities in the new textbook English 11 Moreover, it explores the situation of teaching pre- reading activities in reading comprehension lessons at Dao Duy Tu high school
Eventually, it provides some effective adaptations enabling students of learning English to be motivated and improved in reading performance
The paper is intended to achieve the following objectives:
1 Exploring suitable and unsuitable points of pre-reading activities in the new textbook English 11 published in 2007 by Education Publishing House
2 Investigating into the current situation of pre-reading stage in teaching reading lessons to 11 th form at Dao Duy Tu high school-Thanh Hoa
3 Suggesting some practical adaptation for pre-reading stage in order to increase students‟ motivation and performance in reading comprehension lessons.
Research questions
In order to achieve the above aims and objectives, the investigation is supposed to answer the following research questions:
1 What are some suitable and unsuitable points of pre-reading activities in the new textbook English 11?
2 What is the current situation of using pre-reading activities in the new textbook English 11 at Dao Duy Tu high school?
3 How can we make pre-reading stage more effective in motivating and improving students‟ reading performance?
Scope of the research
Within the scope of a study, adapting reading activities is a vast topic and it results in difficulties for the researcher to get in depth into the analysis of all the aspects of the issue Consequently, this paper only concentrates on investigating some pre-reading activities in reading class In addition, due to limited time, the author can only focus on students at grade 11, especially group 11A3 and 11A5 as well as some teachers at Dao Duy Tu high school to carry out the survey questionnaire, interview, observations and pre-test post-test design.
Methods of the research
The study attempts to evaluate pre-reading activities in motivating and improving reading performance on the 11 th form students at Dao Duy Tu high school In order to achieve the mentioned aims, the following methods are employed: textbook analysis, survey questionnaire for students, interviews for both teachers and 11 th graders, classroom observations and pre-test post-test experimental design
Initially, the researcher analyzes the textbook English 11 to explore the suitable and unsuitable points of pre-reading activities
Moreover, the situation of conducting pre-reading activities at Dao Duy Tu high school is investigated by distributing questionnaire for students and interview for teachers
Next, the researcher observes two classes (11A3 and 11A5) in the twelve reading lessons focusing on the pre-reading stage 11A3 is employed as the control group using original pre-reading activities in the textbook While for the experimental group (11A5), the same lessons are taught with adjusted pre-reading activities Analyzing and comparing the number of students‟ involvement in teacher‟s pre-reading activities, students talking time to prove whether the adaptation of textbook activities will be helpful in increasing the students‟ motivation in pre-reading stage
Finally, a pre-test post-test experimental design was administered for the study to reveal that providing pre-reading activities might serve as useful tools for language teachers and reading teachers in facilitating learners‟ reading comprehension ability Both groups were pre-tested the same reading comprehension passage; however, only the experimental group received the treatment regarding pre-reading activities.
Expected findings
Hopefully, my study is able to:
Explore the suitable and unsuitable points of pre-reading activities in the new textbook English 11
Investigate into the current situation of pre-reading stage in teaching reading to 11 th form at Dao Duy Tu high school
Seek out the effective ways of using pre-reading stage in teaching reading to help students achieve the goals of reading lessons.
Significance of the research
The study highlights the vital role of pre-reading stage in offering an overview of the materials and making the structure and organization of the text for students The research, hence, makes an important contribution to illuminate not only the current situation of adapting some activities in pre-reading stage at Dao Duy Tu high school but also the positive results and its effects on student‟s motivation as well as reading performance Much more importantly, this research would like to give out some practical suggestions for teachers to adapt pre-reading activities in reading classes more effectively.
Limitations of the research
This research can only explore the use of pre-reading stage in teaching reading to make reading lesson more effective to 11 th form students at Dao Duy Tu high school
The success of this study depends much on the attitudes of the participants, including students and teachers involved.
Outline of the research
The research is organized into three main parts as follows:
Part A - Introduction presents the background to the study, states the aim, the research questions, the scope, and the methods of study and outlines the organization of the research
Part B - Development consists of three chapters:
Chapter I - Literature Review conceptualizes the study‟s theoretical background, presents the concepts relevant to the topic of the thesis: pre-reading activities, motivation, textbook evaluation and suggested adaptation for using pre- reading stage effectively to make reading lessons comprehensible
Chapter II - Methodology describes the research instruments and detailed information about the subjects of the study as well as the research procedure is also provided
Chapter III - Findings and Discussions analyzes the initial data and the data to monitor the change to evaluate the effects of pre-reading activity adaptation on student‟s motivation and reading comprehension improvement
Part C - Conclusion summaries the main points presented as well as supplies some practical suggestions to help teachers increase effectiveness of pre-reading stage Limitations of the study and suggestions for further possible research are also discussed in this section
LITERATURE REVIEW
1 2 Types of pre-reading activities
Based on the crucial role of pre-reading stage in encouraging students to read and motivating them in order to enable them to read the text more effectively, teacher should make full use of pre-reading stage as it is important in building confidence and creating interest within learners as well as activate their background knowledge and schema in regard to the target text This can be achieved by using following activities as Doff (1997:59) stated
It is a fact that learners often have difficulty in reading when they encounter new words and new words may de-motivate students Therefore, some unfamiliar words especially ones that make it difficult to understand the text need to be presented before-hand Nonetheless, it is not necessary to introduce all new words before reading Students can get the meaning of many new words basing on the context
Teacher may help students get familiar with the topic by giving them some expected ideas about the text they are going to learn and having some ideas about the topics increases students‟ interest and desire to read Students can get exposure to the topic by many ways: playing games, listening to story, music or teacher can host a short discussion to start students thinking about the topic Another common way to introduce the topic is to give a simple sentence “We are going to read about…” or “The text is about…”
By giving some guiding question before reading teacher can help students activate their prior knowledge about the topic The guiding questions aim at giving students a reason to read by giving them something to look for as they read the text and leading students towards the main points of the text, so that after the first reading they should have good general idea of what it is about
2 1 Definitions and types of motivation
It is common knowledge that motivation is thought to be important and inevitable in most fields, without which one is difficult to succeed Motivation to learn a second language is seen as referring to the extent to which the individual work or strives to learn the language because of a desire to do so and the satisfaction experienced in this activity According to Kleinginna (1981:6) motivation considered as “a desire or want that energizes and directs goal-oriented behavior” Sharing the same point, Brown (2002:160) indicated that “motivation is some kinds of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something” Motivation is also suggested by Woolfolk (2001:136) as “an internal state that arouses, directs and maintains behavior” Moreover, “motivation involves the attitudes and effective states that influence the degree of effort that learners make to learn a second language.” (Ellis, 1997:5) Overall, motivation refers to the combination of effort and desire plus favorable attitudes toward learning the language and occurs as a result of connection of external and internal influences
Apparently, kinds of motivation and their features have been discussed by scholars and psychologists, who referred to motivation which comes from inside and from outside Among them, Moore (1992) separated motivation into two main categories intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation that have an important part in classroom motivation and they are partially accessible to teacher‟s influence
According to Moore (1992:261) “intrinsic motivation is what learners bring to learning environment, that is, their internal attitudes: attitudes, values, needs and personality factors.” For example, students who love to read are intrinsically motivated to read-there is something about reading that they enjoy and that makes them want to do it even if there is no reward for it In addition, he said that
“extrinsic motivation originates outside the individual and is concerned with external environments factors that help shape students‟ behavior” (Moore, involving stickers or a class store may prompt them to read more often In short, most writers agreed that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation interact with each other and play an important role in second language learning As a result, students can be either motivated by internal or external factors depending on the circumstances and conditions the activity is performed
I 2.2 The importance of motivation in learning reading
Actually, most of the English learners usually find reading the toughest and the most boring of the four practical skills They complain that they feel bored with the reading lesson Moreover, the students‟ motivation in learning the reading skill is quite low, some of them are unwilling to participate in the reading activities, and others read the text without any interest From these facts, it is advisable for the reading teachers to stimulate their students or arouse their interest in dealing with reading activities, especially at the opening stage of the lesson Girard (1997:120) once emphasized that: “it is an important part of a reading teacher‟s job to motivate learners.” There are certain ways for the teachers to activate their students‟ motivation To have an effective one, it is essential to examine factors affecting their motivation
I 2.3 Common factors affecting students’ motivation in learning the reading skill
2 3.1 Students‟ factors
There are many factors that can help learners become interested in what they are reading such as their thought, feelings, interests, and their background knowledge Actually, background knowledge, which refers to the existing information on a specific topic, is vital to the reading skill Consequently, if students lack background knowledge, it is difficult for them to get involved in the activities, especially for reading activities They will be unable to use their existing knowledge to comprehend the new material and more importantly they will lose their interest in reading the text.
2 3 2 The reading materials factors
Reading material is another important factor that greatly influences the students‟ motivation in a reading lesson First of all, if the reading material is interesting and relevant to the students, it will motivate them to read more Reading material should have suitable contents, this means, the texts are considered suitable will tell the students thing they do not know and introduce them to new and relevant ideas Secondly, reading material‟s language items such as vocabulary and grammatical structures may have an impact on the students‟ motivation “knowing vocabulary and structures is necessary for getting meaning from a text” (Aebersold
& Field, 1997:138) Through the texts, the students can comprehend the way the others feel or think and make them read for themselves.
2.3 3 The teacher‟s factors
Definitely, teachers also pose an important factor in motivating the students in a reading lesson The teachers, in fact, play the key role in creating a good classroom environment, since it has a powerful effect on the encouragement or discouragement of motivation to learn Furthermore, the teachers‟ activities and tasks are the chief component to the students‟ motivation learning reading skill
Therefore, the teachers need to choose carefully for a specific phase of a reading text, especially for the pre-reading stage If not, the students will be left in confusion and unable to get involved in dealing with the reading passage
I 4 Theoretical background about textbook evaluation
4 1 Definitions
Many authors have defined material evaluation so far Hutchinson & Water (1987:96) suggested that “evaluation is a matter of judging the fitness of something for a particular purpose” Especially, Dudley & St John (1998:128) affirmed that
“evaluation is a whole process which begins with determining what information to gather and ends with bringing about the change in current activities or influencing future ones” An utmost important characteristic of materials evaluation is defined by Tomlinson (1998: xi) as “the systematic appraisal of the value of materials in relation to their objectives and to the objectives using them”
From the above definitions, it can be inferred that materials evaluation involves that determination of what needs to be evaluated, the objectives and requirements for the materials, and the judgments of the value of the materials being evaluated in relation to the objectives and requirements determined.
4 2 Criteria for textbook evaluation
Certain sets of criteria have been mentioned by different scholars Among them, Hutchinson & Torre (1994:32) proposed four criteria need to be considered when evaluating materials as follows:
(ii) Aims and objectives of the course (to find out if the materials can satisfy those aims and objectives);
(iii) Content of the materials (to measure if the content of the materials is suitable to the content prescribed in terms of language description, language point, macro-skills and their proportion, and micro-skill);
(iv) Methodology (to indicate if the theories of learning on which the course is based are in line with the one of the materials under evaluation, to determine whether the kind of exercises/ tasks included in the materials are suited to course requirements)
I 5 Theoretical background about textbook adaptation
5 1 Definitions
Adaptation by its nature is the act or process of adapting, or fitting or the state of being adapted or fitted In terms of language teaching, course book adaptation involves changing existing course books so that they become more suitable for specific learners, teachers or situations, according to Tomlinson
(1998:236) There are several definitions of adaptations by different scholars
Madsen & Bowen (1978: ix) claimed adaptation is an action of employing “one or more of a number of techniques: supplementing, expanding, personalizing, simplifying, modernizing, localizing, or modifying cultural/ situational content.”
Ellis, M (1986:47) considered adaptation as the process of “retaining, rejecting, re- ordering and modification” and Tomlinson (1998b: xi) referred to “reducing, adding, omitting, modifying and supplementing”.
5 2 The necessity of textbook adaptation when teaching foreign languages 12 5 3 Techniques for textbook adaptation
Actually, it can be said that textbook is a key component in most language course and it is considered as a source of language, a learning support It is also for stimulation and for reference Among many important components of English language instruction, textbooks used by language instructors are considered as the most essential constituent to any language program
“The textbook is an almost universal element of ELT teaching […]
No teaching- learning situation, it seems, is complete until it has its relevant textbook.”
Despite the above-mentioned undeniable advantages of the textbooks in language teaching, there is no perfect course book for every course Cunningsworth (1984:6) stated that “No course-book will be totally suited to particular teaching situation” A course-book can be ideal in this situation but in the others is not
Sheldon (1988:239) addressed lack of cultural appropriation of some textbooks, for instance, the thinking underlying the textbook writing may be different from or in conflict with the assumptions held by the teachers
To sum up, teaching materials are a crucial component in any language teaching context So both the benefits and limitations of the use of textbooks needs to be considered, and if the textbooks that are being used in a program are judged to have some negative consequences, remedial action should be taken, such as by adapting or supplementing books or by providing appropriate guidance and support for teachers in how to use them appropriately
After recognizing a gap (mismatch or non-congruence) between published teaching materials and the needs and objectives of the classroom, the teacher has to address the practicalities of adapting the material to meet her class objectives more closely Mc Donough & Shaw (1993) and Cunningsworth (1994) offered lists of techniques that may be used when adapting materials better to fit a specific class, as follows:
Adding: When adding to published material the teacher is supplementing the existing materials and providing more materials The teacher can do this by either extending or expanding
Extending: means the teacher supplies more of the same type of materials, thus making a quantitative change in the material
Expanding: is to add something different to the materials The change is qualitative
It is important to note that to materials can come at the beginning, at the end or in the middle of the materials being adapted
As with the technique of adding, material can be deleted both quantitatively (subtracting) or qualitatively (abridging) For instance, a teacher can decide to do five of the questions practicing the simple past tense instead of the ten in the textbook When abridging, however, the teacher may decide that focusing attention on pronunciation may inhibit the learner‟s fluency and decide not to do any of the pronunciation exercise in a course-book
When simplifying, the teacher could be rewording instructions or text in order to make them more accessible to learners, or simplifying a complete activity to make it more manageable for learners and teachers
When reordering, the teacher has decided that it makes more pedagogic sense to sequence activities differently An example is beginning with a general discussion before looking at a reading passage rather than using the reading as a basis for discussion
When replacing material a teacher may determine that a more appropriate visual or text might serve an activity better than the ones presented in the published material This is often the case with culturally specific or time-specific activities A teacher maybe replace an illustration for one that students could identify with more closely or use information concerning a popular figure with whom the students are familiar rather than the one presented in the textbook Teachers may also decide to substitute a whole activity depending on the goals of a particular class or lesson For example, a reading activity might be replaced with a listening activity
On the whole, adaptation is a very practical activity carried out mainly by the teachers in order to make their work more relevant to the learners with whom they are day to day contact Moreover, it is a fact that no published textbook can possibly cater for every teacher, learner or teaching situation Thus, each teacher has to take responsibility of textbook adaptation in order to ensure an optical match between materials and the particular teaching context.
METHODOLOGY
Setting of the research
The study is conducted at Dao Duy Tu high school which was established 82 years ago Since then this school has increasingly developed and become one of the two largest and most prestigious schools in Thanh Hoa
The school has 36 classes and over 85 teachers of all subjects English is taught as a compulsory and all students must attend three English classes a week
Currently, there are seven teachers of English and over 1500 students ranged from grade 10 to grade 12 Most of the students come from Thanh Hoa city There are 12 classes in grade 11 in this school The size of the class is rather large Each class has
42 students It is obvious that due to large-class size, there are some negative effects on teaching and learning English in the school
Furthermore, the high school‟s facilities are quite good There are five cassette players for listening skill teaching Additionally, there is one projector that is installed in a stable place in a separate room for learning language Other modern equipment supporting for learning and teaching English effectively such as computers, laptops, language teaching labs, etc are available.
2 1 The students
The participants in this research are 84 students from two 11 th grade classes:
11A3 and 11A5 at Dao Duy Tu high school in Thanh Hoa These are the normal classes and the students in these two classes do not belong to any specialized groups, and they are studying English 11- the textbook published by the Ministry of
Education and Training Press in 2007 Each class consists of 42 students The control group in this research is class 11A3 (30 females and 12 males) while the experimental group, class 11A5 with 22 females and 20 males
The two groups seem to have a relatively similar level of proficiency in English as determined by their previous term exam on English grammar, reading and writing All students have been learning English since they were in the 6 th form, which means that they have 4 years of learning English at lower secondary school
Although most students are aware of the importance of learning, English is not paid much attention by most of them in school Few students choose English as a subject to take university entrance exam Most of students usually feel bored with the reading lessons Moreover, the students‟ motivation in learning the reading skill is quite low, some of them are unwilling to participate in the reading activities, and others read the text without any interest.
2 2 The teachers
There are six English teachers at Dao Duy Tu high school who have graduated from pedagogic universities and have English teaching experience for years All of them are young, well-trained and rather professionally with at least five years of teaching English Although none of the teachers has lived, traveled or studied abroad or even cooperated frequently with English native teachers, their English language is recommended to be good enough to teach English for general course
Teaching English, especially teaching English reading has met some obstacles The size of the class is rather large with 42 students in each class As a result, it is hard for teachers to set up activities, especially pre-reading ones, monitor class and give feedback Besides, the students are seated stably in the table line It is obvious that this can demotivate students in participating in activities at the first time of reading lessons
3 1 Document analysis
In order to make pre-reading activities more effective and to attract students‟ interest, pre-reading section of six units in the textbook (unit 3: A party, unit 4:
Volunteer work, unit 6: Competitions, unit 7: The world population, unit 9: The post office and unit 12: The Asian games) are analyzed interpretively to find out whether they are interesting or not for students (demonstrated pictures and illustrations are real, clear and attractive to students or not, pre-reading activities are various or not, those activities are relevant or not to the content of the text).
3 2 Survey questionnaire for students
Students are delivered questionnaire (see Appendix 1) with the hope to find out their attitudes towards pre-reading activities, their preferences for pre-reading techniques as well as comments on the pre-reading activities in the textbook and some suggestions to make pre-reading stage of the reading lesson more interesting
To minimize drawbacks of questionnaire and help the students understand the content and to be able to decide how to respond the questions in a relevant way, clear instructions are given at the beginning of the survey section and when the questions are distributed At the time students do the survey, the researcher always presents in order to instruct the subjects and helps respondents if necessary.
3 3 Interview for teachers
An interview (see Appendix 2) to six teachers who have ever taught English
11 at Dao Duy Tu high school is carried out to get information about their evaluation on pre-reading activities in the textbook, problems they come across when taking pre-reading activities in a reading lesson, students‟ involvement and what they have done to increase students‟ involvement in pre-reading stage.
3 4 Classroom observation
The researcher attends and records twelve English reading lessons focusing on the pre-reading stage of the control group and the experimental group The control group is taught the intact activities in English 11 while the experimental group is instructed the adapted activities
During each lesson, the author observes and depends on an observation sheet (see Appendix 4) designed before to measure and compare the number of students‟ involvement in teacher‟s pre-reading activities, students talking timeat pre-reading stage of both groups to prove whether the adaptation of textbook activities will be helpful in increasing the students‟ motivation at pre-reading stage
At the end of each reading lesson, the researcher attends five students are chosen at random from the experimental group and interviewed to seek out their evaluation on the level of participation as well as attitudes towards the adapted pre- reading activities organized that day.
3 5 Pre-test post-test experimental design
The pre-test and post-test of reading comprehension were designed by the researcher based on the reading material for 11th grade students published by Da Nang publishing house in 2007 and were commented by the researcher‟s colleagues to measure students‟ reading comprehension performance The pre-test and post-test were not identical to eliminate the difficulty of the topic that students might encounter but at the same level of comprehension and proficiency Both groups were pre-tested the same reading comprehension passages; however, only the experimental group received the treatment regarding pre-reading activities such as discussion, pre-guiding questions, language games „stop the bus‟, guessing the names of sports through actions, matching exercise using visual aids
First, the researcher analyzes the textbook English 11 to explore the suitable and unsuitable points of pre-reading activities
Next, questionnaire for students are conducted with the hope to find out their attitudes towards pre-reading activities as well as their preferences for pre-reading techniques Also, the students‟ comments on the pre-reading activities in the textbook are revealed and hopefully, it can help the researcher give some suggestions to make pre-reading stage of the reading lesson more interesting
In addition, an interview to teachers who have ever taught English 11 at Dao Duy Tu high school is carried out to get information about their evaluation on pre- reading activities in the textbook, problems they come across when taking pre- reading activities in a reading lesson, students‟ involvement and what they have done to increase students‟ participation in pre-reading stage
Then, the researcher observes two classes in twelve reading lessons and focuses on the pre-reading stage to be aware of students‟ motivations as well as their reading comprehension abilities For the control group, those lessons are conducted in the usual fashion using the original pre-reading activities in the textbook The same lessons are applied the adapted pre-reading activities to the experimental group The author measures and compares the proportion of students‟ involvement in teacher‟s pre-reading activities, students talking timeat pre-reading stage of both groups to get the data for the research Last but not least, the follow-up interview of five participants in the experimental group is carried out after each lesson to get further information for the study
Finally, the control group and the experimental group were pre-tested the same reading comprehension passage to establish their homogeneity of the samples
The test results were recorded.Then, the 15-week training session was held for only the experimental group that was taught with pre-reading activities To see the significant effect of the treatment, the post-test of reading comprehension which is at the same level of the pre-test was administered to both groups at the end of the last session.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
Document analysis
This section will describe the structure of the material in use and then focus on the analysis of the reading section especially pre-reading stage which the research exploits
English 11 has been designed and published in the school-year 2007-2008 by Educational Press in the light of Communicative Language Teaching Approach
There are sixteen units which are about general interests in which four skills are taught integrated Each of the 16 units contains 5 sections, namely reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus (consists of pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary) In more details,
In Reading section: There are some texts with the length of from 240-270 words All reading sections are divided into three stages: Pre-reading, While- reading and Post-reading with the purposes that students will be provided with some familiar topics and information as well as develop reading skills
In Speaking section: Students practice speaking skills related to the topic of each unit through communicative activities and task-based learning like working in pairs, in groups, role-play and so on
In Listening section: Some passages and dialogues are introduced in which the content is closely related to the topic of each unit The main objective is to develop opportunities for students to correct their pronunciation mistakes
In Writing section: The textbook supplies writing exercises to develop students‟ writing skills through numbers of text: writing a letter or procedure of an event and the like
In Language focus section: This section consists of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar Students have chances to revise the way to pronounce some vowels, consonants and some new words
In this analysis, the researcher only focuses on reading section especially pre-reading stage
It is a fact that reading comprehension is one of the most important skills mentioned in the textbook There are 16 units with 16 following topics as follows:
Table 3.1: Description of topics in English 11
2 Personal experiences 10 Nature in danger
4 Volunteer work 12 The Asian games
8 Celebrations 16 The wonders of the world
As for the organization of the tasks, the reading lesson is divided into 3 parts, including: Before you read (pre-reading), While you read (while-reading) and After you read (post-reading) The tasks and exercises frequently used in the reading section of 6 units (Unit 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, and 12) chosen to analyze are summarized in the following table:
Table 3.2: Activities of reading stage in 6 units are analyzed
1 Answering questions (individually or in pairs)
5 Answering questions (individually or in pairs)
As long as the task types are concerned, there are various kinds of exercises and tasks are used in reading section The number of exercises and tasks are suitable for 45 minute- period Moreover, in terms of the appropriateness of the tasks, most of the tasks are at student‟s level Nevertheless, activities are monotonous and nearly the same in all reading lessons The variety of kinks of tasks is poor Instead of participating in a number of activities students have to take the same task almost all lessons, for example, pre-reading activities for all reading sections are only discussing, answering questions, or matching exercise Consequently, the repetition of task types obviously makes students bored
In this analysis, the researcher only concentrates on the reading sections particularly pre-reading activities in 6 units as mentioned above which the subjects of the study have already studied The aims of the analysis are to find out how pre- reading activities affected the student‟s motivation and interest Particularly, the following section seeks to determine whether the reading topics are interesting and relevant to the students, whether the pre-reading activities are various and appropriate with student‟s level The analysis also examines the visual effects of pictures and illustrations used in this textbook
First of all, the reading topics of the three following pairs of units are common and of general interests to most of students Moreover, the length of the reading texts and the difficult levels of tasks are equal:
Unit 3: A party Unit 7: The world population Unit 6: Competitions
It can be also recognized that those reading topics are all of general interest and relevant to students However, certain background knowledge is required for a full comprehension of the issues raised in or implied by some of the texts which suggests carefully satisfactory works provided by teachers
In addition, the pre-reading activities designed in the textbook are generally said to be monotonous to attract students‟ interest and attention Also, those are used repeatedly and no games are provided to encourage students before actual reading Specifically, the activities and tasks frequently used at pre-reading stage in the reading section of these 6 units are mentioned in the following table:
Table 3.3: Pre-reading activities of 6 units are analyzed
As can be seen clearly from the table, three main activities are always used in most units: giving and answering some discussion questions, and using pictures to illustrate It cannot be denied that learners may get bored with the reading texts if every lesson they do the same task types given in the textbook without any change
They will have no desire to take part in repeated activities Obviously, these activities cannot attract students‟ full attention but de-motivate them Moreover, certain pre-reading tasks, especially the answering questions, do not directly introduce the topic of the reading text that students are going to read For instance, guiding questions used of unit 4 (Volunteer work) are not closely link with the things mentioned in the reading text and too difficult for students to explain the meaning of the saying The inappropriate pre-reading activity not only prevents students from understanding the topic but also decreases their motivation and eagerness before reading
Last but not least, regarding the visual effects, pictures and illustrations in the textbook are mostly artificial ones, thus, they prevent students from exposure to the real world For example, the illustrative picture of unit 4 (page 46) is unfamiliar with Vietnamese students because the organization and volunteer work demonstrated are popular in Western countries only not in Vietnam Obviously, students cannot say about anything they have never known before Besides, the size of the pictures is normally very small, which can make students find difficult to catch the meaning and purposes of the pictures and therefore, de-motivates students
In conclusion, basing on the importance of pre-reading stage and the analysis of textbooks above, pre-reading activities should be adapted in the reading class to make the reading lesson more interesting and effective as well as to increase student‟s motivation and reading performance.
Data collected from survey questionnaire for students
The information obtained from survey questionnaire illustrates that all students asked have been learning English for over five years even some of them have 10 or 11 year-experience of learning English as they have been taught English right from primary school or they were sent to English classes by their parents
Luckily, many of them like learning English and acquire some reading strategies
III.2.2 Students’ beliefs towards the reading texts in the new English 11
Figure 3.1: Students’ beliefs towards the reading texts in the new English 11
The chart demonstrates that students had different views about the reading texts in the new English 11 In details, just 20% of respondents agreed that the reading texts were too difficult, especially around 60% of students surveyed found reading text difficult for them to approach Learners stated many reasons for that such as too many new words and structures, lack of reading skills and unfamiliar topics Therefore, they had little encouragement in learning English However, nearly 20% of learners approached reading passage quite easily and encountered little problems when acquiring it
III.2.3 Difficulties students encounter in reading lessons
In reality, the reading texts in English 11 were quite difficult which created many difficulties for students as follows:
Table 3.4: Difficulties students encounter in reading lessons
Many new words and structures 48 57%
As presented in the table, the biggest problem for learners (57%) was reading texts contained too many new words and structures Another barrier that prevented about 41% of students surveyed from effective reading was the shortage of motivation (one important factor that contributed to reading comprehension) 17% of respondents revealed that they found it hard to comprehend a reading text for the reason of lack of reading skills The dilemma given by 15% of learners reported that the reading texts were boring Finally, 8% of those respondents said the topics are unfamiliar to them
III.2.4 The most frequently used activities to start a reading lesson Table 3.5: The most frequently used activities to start a reading lesson
Present some new words in the text 42 50%
Give a brief introduction to the text 26 30%
Organize some lead-in activities 8 10%
Nothing, teacher asks students to start reading the text at the very first time
According to the data, among activities provided, 50% of samples surveyed said that their teachers regularly introduced some new vocabularies in the passage
Moreover, around 30% of learners asked revealed that they were often gave a brief introduction to the text as teachers could save time to lead them directly to the reading text‟s requirements Then only 10% of students reported that teachers conducted most frequently some other lead-in activities (such as providing some lead-in questions, using visual aids, etc.) to the text so as to attract the students‟ involvement The same percentage of respondent (10%) claimed that teachers did nothing prior to a reading lesson instead they were required to read the text at the very first time of the lesson This may due to the teachers‟ own ways of teaching or because of the time constraint
III.2.5 Students’ attitudes to their teacher’ pre-reading activities
Figure 3.2: Students’ attitudes to their teacher’ pre-reading activities
Obviously, reading activities before reading were supposed very interesting by only 5% of respondents 20% of those asked felt pre-reading activities implemented were good to absorb them Nevertheless, as high as 35% of learners showed no special emotions when taking part in those activities Sadly, 40% of students thought activities employed before reading were not interesting at all and they often neglected to them
III.2.6 Students’ beliefs about good effects of pre-reading activities Table 3.6: Students’ beliefs about good effects of pre-reading activities Good effects of pre-reading activities Number of students
Make students familiar with the topics 28 33%
Increase students‟ interests and motivation 36 43%
Help students understand new words and structures
According to the data, it can be seen obviously that pre-reading activities helped enrich students‟ vocabulary and structures with the highest percentage (67% of respondents) This explained that the real situation of teaching and learning that teachers tried their best to deal with students‟ leading difficulty (lack of vocabulary) Then 43%, 38% and 33% of them considered the goals of undertaking pre-reading activities to motivate them to read, to activate their prior knowledge and to get more information about topics they are going to learn, respectively In addition, nearly 46% of learners agreed that pre-reading activities could achieve all of these purposes mentioned
III.2.7 Students’ beliefs about bad effects of pre-reading activities
Table 3.7: Students’ beliefs about bad effects of pre-reading activities Bad effects of pre-reading activities Number of % students
No concentrate on the reading text 4 4%
As can be seen clearly from the table the majority of respondents (66%) revealed that they were beneficial from taking in extra activities for the pre-reading stage Nevertheless, 4 learners (accounting for nearly 4%) asked believed that pre- reading activities made them not stressed on the main reading text Furthermore, it was waste of time for teachers to conduct extra activities before a reading lesson that around 3% of the population surveyed asserted Apart from that the percentage of students considering those activities to be hard for them to understand accounted for 5% Noticeably, approximately 4% of learners shared the same idea that pre- reading activities had negative influences to them as all of these mentioned above
All in all, students considered conducting extra activities prior to a reading lesson had both positive and negative effects; fortunately, these bad points did not influenced too much to them
III.2.8 Frequency of undertaking extra pre-reading activities in reading class
Figure 3.3: Frequency of undertaking extra pre-reading activities in reading class
Looking at the information described in the chart, it can be revealed that only 5% of respondents believed that their teacher always designed activities apart from what have been given in the textbook Then 35% of them reported their teacher sometimes added activities to make the reading process easier to acquire To the researcher‟ surprise over half of the students surveyed (60%) thought seldom did their teacher put more activities at pre-reading stage but only those provided From what have been said above, it can be interpreted that extra pre-reading activities were rarely supplemented to those available in the textbook Hence, lack of students‟ participations and motivation were understandable
III.2.9 Students’ participation in pre-reading activities in reading lessons
Figure 3.4: Students’ involvement in pre-reading activities in reading lessons
The chart displays that 15% of students always took part in pre-reading activities in reading lessons and 20% of them sometimes joined their teacher‟s activities at pre-reading stage Strikingly, 55% of students asked stated they rarely displayed their performance in the activities before reading From this information, it proves that pre-reading activities conducted were not quite effective and some of them were not interesting enough to get students involved in the pre-reading stage
III.2.10 Students’ preference for participation in pre-reading activities
Figure 3.5: Students’ preference for participation in pre-reading activities
As can be seen in the chart, 20% of samples liked to work individually pre- reading activities in every reading lesson Furthermore, a greater proportion of respondents (45%) preferred to work in couples This result is in accordance with the fact that the students often sat in the table of four so that it hard for them to change the seats arrangement In addition, work-in-pairs helped them have more time as well as more opportunities to express their ideas Next, 35% of students were fond of working in groups It can be understood that group-work enables them to take an active part in discussion and activate their existing knowledge to share experience
III.2.11 Frequency of using pre-reading activities by the teachers
Table 3.8: Frequency of using pre-reading activities by the teachers
No Pre-reading activities Always Sometimes Rarely Never
1 Using language games to introduce the text
4 Explaining the instructions in the text
5 Making students predict the content of the text (by looking at pictures, reading title, subtitle, etc.)
6 Giving specific reading tasks (17) (38) 45% (17) 20% (12) to students 20% 15%
7 Using visual aids (pictures, videos, …) to introduce the topic of the text
8 Giving a brief introduction to the text
According to 100% of learners asked, among activities provided, using pre- reading questions and pre-teaching new vocabulary were always employed to get students involved in the reading lesson It was not surprising because limited vocabulary was considered the most difficulty for students when reading a text
Besides, 55% and 45% of respondents asserted that teachers sometime explained the instructions in the text and supplied specific reading tasks to students, respectively Additionally, guessing the content of the text (by looking at pictures, reading title, subtitle, etc.) and listening to teachers‟ introduction about the topics as activities before reading were rarely done by only 60% of samples Regrettably, using language games as well as visual aids (pictures, videos,…) to introduce the topic of the text mostly were never organized in reading class This may decrease the variety of pre-reading activities and students‟ encouragement.
III.2.12 Students’ preferences for pre-reading activities
Table 3.9: Students’ preferences for pre-reading activities
Interesting Normal Boring Very boring
1 Using language games to introduce the text
4 Explaining the instructions in the text
5 Making students predict the content of the text (by looking at pictures, reading title, subtitle, etc.)
6 Giving specific reading tasks to students
7 Using visual aids (pictures, videos,
…) to introduce the topic of the text
8 Giving a brief introduction to the text
From the data displayed in the table, it can be recognized that using language games as well as visual aids (pictures, videos,…) to introduce the topic of the text were supposed very interesting by 75% and 80% of respondents, respectively
Besides, 55% of students surveyed stated predicting the content of the text (by looking at pictures, reading title, subtitle, etc.) carried out was good to attract them
Nevertheless, a considerable number of learners showed no special feelings when taking part in extra activities before a reading lesson namely giving specific reading tasks to students, using pre-reading questions and giving a brief introduction to the text at 58%, 40%, and 38%, correspondingly Unfortunately, 40% and 35% respectively of students thought activities employed prior to reading such as pre- teaching new vocabulary and explaining the instructions in the text were boring and even very tedious, thus, they often did not pay attention to them
III.2.13 Students’ evaluations on pre-reading activities in the textbook
Table 3.10: Students’ evaluations on pre-reading activities in the textbook
Students’ evaluations Number of students %
Suitable for the students‟ interests 10 12%
According to the above table, in general, almost the learners in the study were not favor of these available activities Surprisingly, more than 40% of samples asked admitted that the extra activities prior to a reading lesson were boring and also could not motivate or attract their attention because those activities designed were monotonous even not closely related to the reading text Also, 35% of the population surveyed thought that they really did not enjoy the pre-reading activities in English 11 It is a matter of fact that students lost eagerness to take part in very boring pre-reading activities in the textbook Meanwhile, the pre-reading activities designed in English 11 were supposed very interesting by only 5% of respondents
Moreover, 10% of students believed that pre-reading activities designed in the textbook were interesting and 12% of those asked agreed those were suitable to their engagement
III.2.14 Students’ recommendation on pre-reading activities to make a reading lesson more interesting
Table 3.11: Students’ recommendation on pre-reading activities to make a reading lesson more interesting Students’ recommendation Number of students
Add more various kinds of pre-reading activities 76 90%
Provide pre-reading activities that are of the students‟ interest only
Select suitable pre-reading activities to meet the demand of each lesson
Nothing, there is no need 0 0%
Data collected from teacher interview
Figure 3.6: Teachers’ evaluation of reading texts in the textbook
The chart shows that teachers shared common view with their students that reading texts in English 11 were above their head Briefly, 60% of the teachers interviewed asserted that reading texts were difficult for teaching and learning
They complained that some of the reading passages were too long and had many new words that de-motivate students Also, certain topics were good and related to students‟ daily topics such as friendship, sports, hobbies, and recreation; on the other hand, some topics such as nature in danger, sources of energy, and wonders of the world were not close familiar enough to their daily communication However,
40% of teachers reported that the reading texts were normal and suitable to students‟ levels as all of them have learnt English for over five years so that they could master a big number of new words as well as get exposed to variety of reading topics
III.3.2 Teachers’ evaluation on pre-reading activities in English 11
Figure 3.7: Teachers’ evaluation on pre-reading activities in English 11
Similar to their students, teachers at Dao Duy Tu high school were interviewed to examine their opinions about evaluation on pre-reading activities in the textbook The pie chart shows that only one teacher (20%) believed that the pre- reading activities were interesting whereas two out of six teachers asked (30%) claimed that they were normal Surprisingly, 50% of populations thought these activities were boring and could not motivate or attract their students‟ attention because they were monotonous and unsuitable for the students‟ interests These teachers also affirmed that the most common activities for pre-reading stage were answering questions, discussing questions and matching There was a lack of communicative activities such as playing games, listening to music or telling stories which led to boredom among students Moreover, some of the illustrative pictures were abstract and unfamiliar to students, therefore; this could decrease students‟ involvement and engagement to the reading lesson
III.3.3 Teachers’ beliefs about the purposes of carrying out pre-reading activities
Table 3.12: Teachers’ beliefs about the purposes of carrying out pre-reading activities
New words and structures understanding 6 100 %
It is clear from the information described in the table that 100% teachers asked conducted pre-reading stage for understanding new words and structures
Furthermore, knowledge sharpening as well as motivation increasing before actual reading considered as the purposes of 80% of interviewees asked when they carried out pre-reading activities Next, half of the populations interviewed would like to set purpose of reading for students before actual reading In addition, more than
30% of teachers thought pre-reading activities can be employed to obtain all the purposes above Overall, from the result collected it is obvious that not only students but also teachers considered pre-reading activities the resources to supply new words when only activities in the textbook were organized
III.3.4 Teachers’ belief about students’ participation and their suggestions to increase students’ participation in pre-reading activities
Teachers’ belief about students’ participation in pre -reading activities
Table 3.13: Teachers’ beliefs about students’ participation in pre-reading activities Number of teachers Students’ participation % of students’ participation
It can be said that 100% of populations answered the interview did not satisfy with the students‟ involvement in reading lessons in general and in pre- reading stage in particular In fact, most of the learners only participated in pre- reading activities whenever the teachers asked them to
From the data displayed in the table, it can be recognized that only 20% of teachers claimed 15% and 20% of their students enjoyed and took their activities of pre-reading phase very actively and actively, respectively These results are in accordance with those of survey questionnaire for students that 20% of respondents felt pre-reading activities implemented were good to attract them Noticeably, 80 % of teachers asked revealed the same points with their students that more than half of their students (55%) were not eager to take part in activities organized even 4-5 students (10%) did not display their performance in activities at pre-reading stage
In short, most of the teachers considered that their students did not have positive attitudes to their pre-reading activities It is a matter of fact that students lost eagerness to take part in monotonous pre-reading activities in the textbook This means adaptation pre-reading activities to get students join in those activities with great eagerness is necessary teacher should do
Teachers’ recommendation to increase students’ participation
Table 3.14: Teachers’ recommendation to increase students’ participation Teachers’ recommendation Number of teachers %
Inappropriate activities varying and adapting 6 100%
The fresh, competitive and co-operative class atmosphere creating
Grades and praises or positive comments 3 50%
Being aware of the importance of pre-reading activities and the matter that some long and difficult reading texts to students as well as the repeated pre-reading activities in the textbook, 100% of the teachers chose varying and adapting inappropriate activities of pre-reading phase in textbook as the main technique in getting students involved and motivated These choices are in accordance with the students‟ recommendation in survey questionnaire that teachers supply more various kinds of extra activities and adjust the unsuitable activities of the students‟ interest In other words, teachers can apply games and visual aids to make the activities more interesting and appropriate as well as to offer students opportunities to communicate and reduce the requirement to be more suitable to their levels
Moreover, creating the fresh, competitive and co-operative class atmosphere as a good way of 80% of teachers would like to attract students participating in activities prior to reading and improve their abilities in reading comprehension
Also, 50% teachers interviewed employed marks as students‟ rewards and evaluation towards students‟ answers In this case, grades and praises or positive comments are really useful means for the teachers to encourage students to speak
Last but not least, teachers are supportive and friendly which makes students comfortable to join their voice in the reading lessons
III.3.5 Frequency of adapting pre-reading activities and methods of adaptation
Frequency of adaptation for pre-reading activities
Figure 3.8: Frequency of adaptation for pre-reading activities
It can be seen in the above chart that nearly 45% of teachers often made certain adaptation to pre-reading activities provided in the textbook as they realized that designed activities were boring and too monotonous to motivate their students to take part in pre-reading activities Furthermore, as high as 55% of teachers interviewed admitted that they rarely made any change to activities given because these activities are interesting enough Similarly, over half of the students (60%) in survey questionnaire responded that seldom did their teacher put more activities at pre-reading stage but only those provided In summary, the majority of teachers seldom made any adaptation for pre-reading activities but they normally followed those available in the textbook As a result, they could not attract learners‟ involvement and interests in reading lessons as well as improve students‟ reading performance
Teachers’ me thods for adaptation
Obmit an activity Add an activity Change an activity Replace an activity
Figure 3.9: Teachers’ methods for adaptation
The data presented in the chart reveals that adding an activity and replacing an activity by another one were the most popular methods employed by 80% of teachers When teachers found the provided activities are not suitable or inadequate to students‟ understanding they might supply one more activity or design another to replace one given In addition, changing an activity based on one given was also used by 30% of the teachers because it was challenging, time-consuming and needed a lot of their work and energy when they modified an activity Besides, only 10% of them have ever omitted pre-reading activities It can be recognized that omitting an activity was rather easy to do but not be preferred by educators because this may contribute to their students‟ difficulties in acquiring texts‟ content
III.3.6 Teachers’ difficulties when undertaking pre-reading activities Table 3.15: Teachers’ difficulties when undertaking pre-reading activities
Hard and time-consuming designing 2 35 %
First of all, the biggest problem that 100% teachers of English interviewed encountered was too crowded class It is a fact that at Dao Duy Tu high school a class consists of at least 40 students This caused many difficulties for teachers in teaching and managing class As a result, teachers cannot obtain full objectives of the lesson
Data collected from classroom observation
As mentioned earlier, to explore the current situation of teaching and learning reading section particularly pre-reading stage and find out real information to supplement to the reliability of survey questionnaire and interview, the writer observed twelve reading lessons and observation sheets were completed during each lesson in which the researcher attended and focused on the pre-reading stage
The change of number of students in the control and experimental group involve in teacher’s activities of pre-reading stage
Table 3.16: Number of students involve in teacher’s activities of pre-reading stage in the control and experimental group
(original pre-reading activities) (adapted pre-reading activities)
The researcher attended twelve reading lessons in which the pre-reading stage of six of them was adapted for the experimental group and six others for the control group were not (see Appendix 3) In general, the teacher conducted pre- reading activities in every twelve lessons in about 7 to 10 minutes According to the writer‟s direct observation, the number of learners taking part in the activities for pre-reading stage changed considerably in the experimental class compared to that figure of the control group
According to the researcher‟s observation, about 31-52% of students in the control group took part in pre-reading activities available in the textbook for the reasons that those were not interesting and irrelevant to the reading texts Similarly, the repetition of pre-reading activities for all six reading lessons are discussing, answering questions, or matching exercise obviously makes students bored After those activities were adapted, surprisingly, the number of participants increases considerably by at least 60% and they were more excited, more active and eager to join the activities The students showed great interest in practicing the provided exercises in class Actually, adapted activities had stimulated students‟ interests, created a light and lively atmosphere and generated more student involvement
In short, it would be said that the levels of students‟ participation gained after the experimental may partly be affected by other factors like the atmosphere of the class, topic of the lesson, teachers‟ attitude and teaching techniques, gender or ability and level of interest in learning English However, after the adaptation of the pre-reading activities the result changed strikingly There was a significant difference in students‟ motivation and enjoyment when extra activities at pre- reading stage were supplemented for pre-reading stage were improved
The differences of students’ participation in teacher’s pre-reading activities in the control and experimental group
Table 3.17: Teacher talking time (TTT) and students talking time (STT) of the control group and the experimental group at pre-reading stage
Unit Pre-reading stage (minutes)
Actually, during the observations, the researcher found out that teachers teaching the original pre-reading activities tended to dominate the class at pre- reading stage Teachers often talked a lot for fear of students not knowing what they should do and teachers also tried to get students involved However, it can be seen in the table above, that-teacher talking time in trial group was reduced significantly in comparison with that number in the control group For instance, in the first lesson (unit 3), which pre-reading stage lasted in 7 minutes, teacher spoke 5 minutes in the control group but in the experimental group teacher just decreased to only 3 minutes and the similar situation also happened in the following lessons Moreover, student talking time in the experimental class increased considerably compared to that figure of the control group Noticeably, the speaking time of students in the experimental group was 3 more minutes than students in the control class in unit 6 and unit 12 It is true that if activities for the pre-reading stage are adjusted students‟ motivations and interests will go up significantly
The observations also reveal that the way teacher adapted activities for pre- reading stage in class attracted a large number of students Students were really interested in games, pictures teachers gave them Consequently, the teacher created a fresh and competitive atmosphere for students Furthermore, she rewarded students with marks for any students who could finish the activities of pre-reading phase excellently and quickly In that case, marks and praises or positive comments were really useful means for teacher to motivate students to read the passage
Besides, she was supportive and friendly, which made the students comfortable to participate their voice in the lessons This fact proves that there was a high level of students‟ involvement in these experimental classes
To summarize, this information proves that the overall class motivation changed much for the better when activities for pre-reading stage were adapted The obvious effect on the students was the increase of the proportion of students‟ active involvement and their amount of talking time in the classroom activities in a more relaxing and supportive environment
At the end of each experimental lesson the researcher interviewed five students in the class to find out their attitudes and level of involvement in the adapted pre-reading activities that they have been taught During the time of this research the writer made 30 interviews in total and all of them were done in English The researcher tried to make simple questions and let students be free to express their own feelings
Actually, all the students showed their interest in the three lessons with some new pre-reading activities from these in their textbook There were some new changes in teacher‟s methods and techniques of teaching and learning, which arouses the students‟ curiosity Some of students interviewed affirmed that they lost eagerness to take part in pre-reading activities in the textbook because: “They are monotonous”, “They are impractical”, “Activities are the same”, “I don‟t like it”,
“Pictures look unfamiliar and unclear”, “Somewhat boring”, “I‟m not interested in” However, they felt to be fresh and motivated by various adjusted activities in these lessons Also, some others stated that they loved games and pictures the teacher applied in the lessons
On being asked about their evaluation on their level of participation during the time of experiment, the students all admitted that they became more excited, more active and fully involved in classroom activities than before, as they expressed: “I become more active”, “Activity is exciting”, “They are suitable”, “I like it”, “Pay more attention”
Briefly, with the data collected from the classroom observations and the students‟ positive attitudes from the follow-up interview, it can be proved that learners can be de-motivated if only pre-reading activities in the course-book were organized Adaptations made the students feel fresh and interested, and create a light and lively atmosphere, generate more student involvement and facilitate students‟ reading comprehension abilities.
Data collected from pre-test post-test experimental design
The two classes, namely, 11A3 (the control group) and 11A5 (the experimental group) were pre-tested the same reading comprehension test (see Appendix 5) to establish their homogeneity of the samples The test results were recorded Then, the training session was held for only the experimental group They were taught with pre-reading activities such as discussion, pre-guiding questions, language games „stop the bus‟, guessing the names of sports through actions, matching exercise using visual aids (see Appendix 6) for 15 weeks To see the significant effect of the treatment, the post-test of reading comprehension (see Appendix 5) which is at the same level of the pre-test was administered to both groups at the end of the last session
To achieve the purpose of the study, the following null hypothesis was formulated: “Pre-reading activities have no significant effect on students‟ performance in reading comprehension.” Paired-samples t-test was used to see whether there was a statistically significant difference in the mean scores for Time 1 (prior to the intervention) and Time 2 (after the intervention) of the same group
Independent samples t-test was conducted to compare the possible differences between the means of the experimental and control groups based on the gain scores from the pre-test and post-test The following table indicates the summary of independent-samples t-tests vertically and paired-samples t-tests horizontally.
Table 3.18: The summary of independent-and paired-samples t-tests
Row = Independent –samples t-tests Control group
After transforming the data based on the results from paired samples-t-tests to neutralize the extraneous differences, an independent samples t-test was conducted to see whether there was a statistically significant difference in the posttest mean scores of the experimental and control groups An alpha level of 0.05 was established before testing the significance As recommended by Pallant (2007), the Levene's Test for Equality of Variances was checked If the Levene's Test is significant (p < 05), the two variances are significantly different If it is not significant (p >.05), the two variances are approximately equal Here, since the Levene's test is significant (p = 0.001 < 05), it can be assumed that the variances are not equal Therefore, the assumption of equal variance has not been met Next, the results of the t-test were checked If the variances are approximately equal, the top line is read If the variances are not equal, the bottom line of the t-test table, which refers to equal variances not assumed, is read Based on the results of the Levene's test, it was known that the two groups had not equal variances, so the bottom line was read
As indicated in Table 3.19, there is a significant difference between the gain scores for the experimental group (M = 9.35, SD = 1.34) and the gain scores for the control group (M = 5.36, SD = 0.70; t (27.07) = 12, p
