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Output file VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** Dao thi hoa Using Supplementary Reading Materials wi[.]
VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** Dao thi hoa Using Supplementary Reading Materials with the Course book Business Basics to Improve the Efficiency of reading teaching and learning for Second-year Students at Bac Ha College of Technology Sö dụng tài liệu đọc bổ trợ cho giáo trình Business Basics nhằm nâng cao hiệu việc dạy học kỹ đọc cho sinh viên năm thứ hai tr-ờng Cao đẳng Công nghệ Bắc Hà m.a minor thesis Field: Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Phan Thi Van Quyen Hanoi - 2010 z Table of contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………… i Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………… ii List of tables and charts………………………………………………………………… iii Table of contents………………………………………………………………………… iv Part a: Introduction Rationale………………………………………………………………………………… Aims of the study……………………………………………………………………… Significance of the study……………………………………………………………… Research questions……………………………………………………………………… Methodology…………………………………………………………………………… Design of the study……………………………………………………………………… Part B: development Chapter 1: Literature review 1.1 An overview of reading……………………………………………………………… 1.1.1 Definitions of reading comprehension………………………………………… 1.1.2 Models of reading …………………………………………………………… 1.1.3 Reading skills and types of reading skills……………………………………… 1.1.3.1 Definition of reading skills……………………………………………… 1.1.3.2 Types of reading skills………………………………………………… 1.2 Materials development in language teaching………………………………………… 1.2.1 Definition of language teaching materials……………………………………… 1.2.2 Processes in materials development…………………………………………… 1.2.2.1 Materials evaluation……………………………………………………… 1.2.2.2 Types of materials evaluation…………………………………………… 1.2.2.3 Criteria for materials evaluation………………………………………… 1.2.3 Supplementary materials in teaching reading skills………………………… 10 1.2.3.1 Definition of supplementary materials………………………………… 10 1.2.3.2 Criteria for selecting supplementary materials………………………… 10 1.2.3.3 How to use supplementary materials…………………………………… 11 Summary z Chapter 2: Methodology 2.1 Background to the study…………………………………………………………… 14 2.1.1 The setting…………………………………………………………………… 14 2.1.2 The textbook Business Basics……………………………………………… 14 2.1.3 Participants…………………………………………………………………… 15 2.1.3.1 The teachers…………………………………………………………… 15 2.1.3.2 The students…………………………………………………………… 16 2.2 Instrument for data collection……………………………………………………… 16 2.2.1 The questionnaire for teachers……………………………………………… 16 2.2.2 The questionnaire for students……………………………………………… 17 2.3 Data collection procedure…………………………………………………………… 17 Chapter 3: Data analysis, findings and discussion 3.1 Data analysis………………………………………………………………………… 18 3.2 Findings and discussion……………………………………………………………… 27 3.2.1 The teachers’ and the students’ evaluations of the current textbook Business Basics……………………………………………………………………… 27 3.2.2 The teachers’ and the students’ expectations of supplementary reading materials…………………………………………………………………… 28 Chapter 4: Recommendations 4.1 Suggestions for selecting supplementary materials………………………………… 29 4.2 Designing tasks and activities for reading passages………………………………… 30 4.3 Sample supplementary readings……… …………………………………………… 30 Part C: conclusion Conclusion of the study……………………………………………………………… 37 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study…………………………… 37 References Appendices Appendix 1: Questionnaire for teachers Appendix 2: Questionnaire for students z Lists of tables and charts Tables Table 1: The teachers’and students’ evaluations on level of difficulty, content and length of reading texts in the textbook Table 2: The teachers’ opinions on reading exercises in the textbook Business Basics Table 3: The students’ opinions on reading exercises in the textbook Business Basics Table 4: Topics in the textbook need supplementary reading Table 5: Teachers’ expectations of the supplementary reading materials Charts Chart 1: The teachers’ purpose of using supplementary materials in teaching reading lessons Chart 2: The teachers’ suggestions on the types of exercises to be used in the supplementary materials Chart 3: Teachers’ sources to get supplementary reading z Part a: introduction Rationale Nowadays, in the time of globalization, English plays an essential role in the increasing development of science, technology, politics, economics, tourism, culture and so on English language is not only considered as a means of communication but also a key to access the important achievements of science and technology Therefore, learners of English should acquire this language and teaching and learning English become popular in our country Among four language skills, reading is very important in learning a foreign language as reading helps students to widen their knowledge and understand different academic materials written in English Carrel (1981: 1) also emphasizes “for many students, reading is by far the most important of the four skills in a second language, particularly in English as a second or foreign language” It is necessary for the second year students at Bac Ha College of Technology to develop reading ability effectively because reading provides a lot of useful information as well as enrich their language vocabulary and structures Reading will be an effective way to help students enhance their English proficiency especially their reading skills Nevertheless, despite the teachers‟ and students‟ efforts, the students at Bac Ha College of Technology have a poor reading result that makes them uninterested in learning English in general and in learning reading skill in particular The students‟ English proficiency at Bac Ha College of Technology is not the same It is due to the fact that they come from different places Most of them come from the countryside so they can not have preferable English learning condition The others come from towns and cities where they have more convenient condition of learning English This results in low English proficiency of the students because of their limited vocabulary and grammar In addition, they not have appropriate reading strategies and background knowledge Therefore, students face a lot of difficulties in reading and understanding the long texts especially the texts relating to economic fields which they are studying As a result, they find it hard to be successful in their reading and they are not interested in reading z With the purpose of improving their English knowledge, it is very important for the teachers to provide them as many opportunities to read as possible Nuttall in the book “Teaching reading skills in a foreign language” (1982) states that “reading as a purposeful activity, we can make teaching more purposeful and classes livelier, even in the difficult circumstances” All the above reasons have inspired me to carry out the study on “Using Supplementary Reading Materials with the Course book Business Basics to Improve the Efficiency of Reading Teaching and Learning for Second-year Students at Bac Ha College of Technology”, with a hope to improve the teaching and learning English as well as the teaching and learning reading comprehension Aims of the study The purpose of the study is to find ways of developing the effective reading materials so as to improve the teaching reading skill of the teachers as well as to enhance the students‟ learning reading The specific aims of this research are as follows: - To find out some different evaluations made by teachers and students towards the textbook Business Basics, which is currently used by the second year students at Bac Ha College of Technology - To examine the teachers‟ and the students‟ expectations of supplementary reading materials - To give recommendations for selecting supplementary materials to improve teaching reading of the teachers as well as learning reading of the students Significance of the study This study is of great importance to the author herself as well as to all teachers of English It helps to reinforce students‟ English proficiency and suggests ways to improve the teaching of English in general and reading in particular at Bac Ha College of Technology and most schools and universities that share the same mandate Research questions On the basis of the problems, the following research questions were formulated to conduct this study What are the teachers‟ and the students‟ evaluations of the textbook Business Basics? z What are the teachers‟ and the students‟ expectations of supplementary reading materials? Methodology The methods used in the study is quantitative and qualitative A questionnaire is used as a main instrument for data collection Two sets of questionnaires were designed and delivered to the teachers and the second-year students at Bac Ha College of Technology in order to find out answers to the research questions The data were collected, synthesized and analyzed from the survey questionnaires for both teachers and students on their evaluations of the current textbook and their expectations of supplementary reading materials Design of the study This study is divided into three parts Part A is the introduction in which the rationale, aims of the study, significance, research questions, methodology and design of the study are stated Part B is the development, the main part of the study In this part, there are four chapters Chapter reviews the literature concerning an overview of reading, reading comprehension with models of reading process, the theory of materials development and supplementary materials in teaching reading skills Chapter presents methodology of the study consisting of the background to the study It covers the setting, the textbook Business Basics, the participants, the instrument as well as data collection procedure Chapter goes into details of the data analysis, findings and discussion Chapter briefly deals with recommendations of the study Part C comes up with the summary of the study in which limitations of the study and suggestions for further research are also presented z Part B: Development Chapter 1: Literature review 1.1 An overview of reading 1.1.1 Definitions of reading comprehension Reading comprehension plays an important role in teaching and learning a foreign language It has the nature of communication, in which reading activity acts as a means of communication between the writer and the reader Reading comprehension can be affected by world knowledge, with many demonstrations that readers who possesses rich knowledge about the topic of a reading usually understand the reading better than classmates with lower knowledge Roe, Stood and Burns (1987: 2) indicate “Reading comprehension is reconstruction, interpretation and evaluation of what author of written content means by using knowledge gained from life experience” Sharing the same point of view, Grellet (1981: 3) consider “reading comprehension or understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible” In his definition, reading comprehension simply means reading and understanding Reading comprehension is not merely decoding-translating written symbols into corresponding sounds Though these definitions are not exactly the same, what comes up a common point is that reading comprehension is the process in which the readers, as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and what is implied behind these forms While reading, learners of language need to have critical thinking to understand and analyze what is written Then readers can learn both grammar and vocabulary after reading From that, they will easily understand the content of the reading 1.1.2 Models of reading In terms of the reading process, many language researchers (Nuttall, 1996; Ur, 1991; Alderson, 2000, etc) share the same viewpoint that there are three different ways of processing a text namely the bottom-up, the top-down and interactive models The bottom-up models: The basis of bottom up models is linguistics knowledge of the reader In these models, the reader starts with the written text (the bottom), and constructs meaning from the letters, words, phrases and sentences found within and then 10 z processes the text in a linear fashion The bottom-up models analyze reading as a process in which small chunks of text are absorbed, analyzed, and gradually added to the next chunk until they become meaningful The top- down models: The top- down process moves from the top, the higher level mental stages, down to the text itself In these models, the reading process is driven by the reader‟s mind at work on the text (reader- driven models) The reader rather than the text is at the heart of the reading process Interactive models of the reading process are proposed in the light of the perceived deficiencies of both bottom- up and top- down models Like top- down models, they are reader- driven This means the reader uses his or her previous understanding to guess about text content and as in bottom- up models, the reader is dependent upon what is in the text Hayes (1991) supposes that “Interactive models are more than a compromise between bottom- up and top- down theories In interactive models, different processes are thought to be responsible for providing information that is shared with other processes The information obtained from each type of processing is combined to determine the most appropriate interpretation of the printed page” In brief, interactive models are more adequate than the bottom- up and top- down models because they maximize the strong points and minimize the weak points of the use of both bottom- up and top- down models Thus, the language users need combine and practice both bottom- up and top- down strategies to gain efficiency in the reading process 1.1.3 Reading skills and types of reading skills 1.1.3.1 Definition of reading skills Reading skill is one of the four important skills in learning language Paris, Wasik and Turner (1991: 611) also confirm “Reading skills refer to information – processing techniques that are automatic, whether at the level of recognizing grapheme – phoneme correspondence or summarizing a story Skills are applied to a text unconsciously for many reasons including expertise, repeated practice, and compliance with directions, luck, and native use” 1.1.3.2 Types of reading skills - Skimming Skimming is used to quickly gather the most important information Grellet, F (1981: 19) says “When skimming, we go through the reading material quickly in order to get the gist 11 z of it, to know how it is organized, or to get an idea of the tone or the intention of the writer” Hedge, T (2000: 195) points out that “Skim reading is used to get a global impression of the content of a text An example would be previewing a long magazine article by reading rapidly, skipping large chunks of information, and focusing on headings and first lines of paragraphs” - Scanning Scanning occurs when a reader looks quickly through the text searching for a specific piece of information or to see if the text is suitable for a specific reading purpose Hedge, T (2000: 195) suggests that “Scanning involves searching rapidly through a text to find a specific point of information, for example, the relevant times on a timetable, items in a directory, or key points in academic text” Scanning is the reading skill we use when we want to find the answer to a specific question Scanning is an useful reading skill that may at first strange to a learner who is used to reading everything in a foreign language with the same degree of attention - Predicting This is an important skill of efficient readers Predicting uses knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions about content and vocabulary and check comprehension as well as knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure Next, it uses knowledge about the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content - Inference Inference means making use of syntactic, logical and cultural clues to discover the meaning of unknown elements If these are words, then word-formation and derivation will also play an important role When dealing with a new text, it is better not to explain the difficult words to the learners Students should be encouraged to make a guess at the meaning of the words they not know rather than look them up in a dictionary If they need to look at the dictionary to get the meaning, they should only so after having tried to work out a solution on their own Therefore, it is very essential to develop the inference skill 12 z ... out the study on ? ?Using Supplementary Reading Materials with the Course book Business Basics to Improve the Efficiency of Reading Teaching and Learning for Second- year Students at Bac Ha College. .. four years, the textbook Business Basics has been used as an official economics English textbook for teaching reading to the second year students at Bac Ha College of Technology Students have... proficiency and suggests ways to improve the teaching of English in general and reading in particular at Bac Ha College of Technology and most schools and universities that share the same mandate