(Skkn 2023) adapting reading comprehension questions in english 10 global success textbook in the direction of competence development to improve reading comprehension results for grade 10 students

NGHE AN DEPARTMENT OF TRAINING AND EDUCATION NAM DAN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHING EXPRIENCES TOPIC: “Adapting reading comprehension questions in English 10 global success textbook in the direction of competence development to improve reading comprehension results for grade 10 students” Teacher: Hồ Thị Mỹ Hạnh Group: Xã Hội Tel: 0986987872 Nam Dan 2022-2023 TABLE OF CONTENT STT CONTENT PAGE INTRODUCTION I The setting of study I II Rationale III Scope of the study 2- IV The new point of the study CONTENT I Theoretical basis II The analysis of the situation in Nam Đan high school 4-36 III Measures taken to solve the problem II IV The necessity and the feasibility of the suggested solutions V Effectiveness of the study VI Meaning of the study CONCLUSION I Experience lesson III 37-38 II Suggesions APPENDIX 39-46 IV REFERENCES V 47 PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale English plays an essential part in many fields, including science, culture and social interaction Thanks to English, people have more opportunities to understand advanced scientific and technological theories It also helps people to integrate into international society quickly so that they can improve their abilities Therefore, English is considered as the second important foreign language in the education system in many countries around the world In four skills: Listening - Speaking - Reading - Writing, reading is a basic skill that helps students form vocabularies and ideas related to the topic of the lesson Besides, if students have good reading comprehension ability, they can read and understand documents written in English, this helps them to improve their English in general and other knowledge and social skills in particular In the current English 10 (10-year system) program, many reading passages have designed tasks that are not suitable for learners' abilities as well as the format of questions in the high school graduation exam In addition, Reading Comprehension also accounts for 35% of the total score in the current high school exam Therefore, how to develop reading comprehension skills for students is an important task that teachers need to in order to help them not only have the ability to read and understand the lessons in the program but also be able to read at home to expand your knowledge In addition, this is also an opportunity for students to have early access to the types of questions that will appear in the Reading Comprehension Test, and help to improve students' scores in this exam However, basing on preliminary observations at Nam Đàn high school, I find that our students consider reading a difficult skill They often cannot understand the content of English texts well For example, after reading a text, it is often difficult for them to grasp the main idea of the text Furthermore, they were not able to correctly answer questions related to the text Therefore, improving reading level is a must for students and it is beneficial for their reading as well as their daily test Researchers have consistently emphasized the importance of teaching in the class and teacher’s guidance on reading practice In fact, students themselves are responsible for their own learning In addition, teachers also need to innovate methods of teaching in the direction of competence development for students and need to start from the 10th grade program From the reasons mentioned above, I have studied the solution: “Adapting reading comprehension questions in English textbooks 10 global success in the direction of competence development to improve reading comprehension results for grade 10 students" 2 Aim of the study: The purpose of the study is to redesign the reading questions in the 10th grade English textbook towards the development of students' ability The study aims to accomplish the following objectives: - To explore the effectiveness of adapted reading skills towards competence development - To analyze the student's progress through the measures Scope of the study: - Scope of content: Reading Comprehension lessons in the 10th English textbook program - Scope of research: 42 students in class 10D2 New point in research results - Promote the activeness and initiative of students in Reading Comprehension lessons - Systematize the questions in English 10 textbooks (10-year system) in the direction of the final examination - Contribute to innovate methods of competence development orientedteaching for students in high school - Help learners have more interest, enthusiasm as well as motivation with the subject - Contribute to improve the score in the graduation exam through reading comprehension exercises designed to follow the final exam’s structure PART B: CONTENT Chapter 1: Literature review Definition of reading skills Reading is a familiar term in teaching and learning Reading is one of the English skills that are part of the four essential skills that include listening, speaking and writing However, different scholars define reading skills in different ways Richards and Schmidt (2002) define reading skill as abilities required for skillful reading, such as discerning main ideas, understanding sequence, noticing specific details, making inferences, making comparisons, and making predictions in second and foreign language instruction, particularly with adults These skills are sometimes taught separately Patel and Jain (2008) state that reading is understanding the meaning of printed words i.e written symbols Reading is an active process which consists of recognition and comprehension skill Reading is an important activity in life with which one can update his/her knowledge Reading skill is an important tool for academic success Gray in Patel &Jain (2008) classifies that reading is form of experience Reading brings us in contact with the minds of great authors, with the written account of their experiences Strickland, Galda, & Cullinan (2007) say that reading is a dynamic process in which an active reader engages with a text in order to create meaning This creation of meaning requires a greet deal of work by the reader Reading is a visual process - vision is a symbolic process of seeing an item or symbol and translating it into an idea or image According to Richard (2003), reading means using knowledge to understand, not just how to read written symbols Millrood (2001) defines reading as a visual and cognitive process of extracting meaning from a passage by understanding written text, processing the information, and connecting it to existing experience He also pointed out that reading is a way of intellectual communication between people and society that they can use to sustain ideas, knowledge is converted into behavior According to Josef Essberger, "Reading" is the process of looking at a series of written symbols and getting meaning from them When we read, we use our eyes to receive written symbols (letters, punctuation marks and spaces) and we use our brain to convert them into words, sentences and paragraphs that communicate something to us Mareilon (2007) states that reading is making meaning from print and from visual information But reading is not simple Reading is an active process that requires a great deal of practice and skill Reading is a fluent process of reader combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning (Nunan, 2003) Based on the definition above, the researcher can make sum up that reading is receptive skill to understand printed words likes discerning main ideas, understanding sequence, noticing specific details, making inferences, making comparisons, and making predictions in second and foreign language instruction And also the researcher can say that reading is an ability to understand written English as it is presented in textbooks, newspaper, magazine, menu, massages and in academic materials Definition of reading comprehension Reading comprehension is the ability to process what is being read, understand the meaning the author is trying to convey - both textually and subtextually - and make inferences based on prior knowledge Reading comprehension involves two levels of processing, shallow (lowlevel) processing and deep (high-level) processing Deep processing involves semantic processing, which happens when we encode the meaning of a word and relate it to similar words Shallow processing involves structural and phonemic recognition, the processing of sentence and word structure, i.e firstorder logic, and their associated sounds This theory was first identified by Fergus I M Craik and Robert S Lockhart Al-Sa’oud (2002) states that reading comprehension is the final goal of any reading task As a result, he believes that the readers have to employ different reading strategies, knowledge of the content, and experience to comprehend the reading text and obtain the meaning Reading comprehension is considered the ultimate goal of reading According to Snow (2002), reading comprehension is an ongoing reading process in which the reader constructs the meaning from the printed text through an interactive process To Snow, reading comprehension requires three main components which vary in the phases of reading (pre-reading, reading, post-reading) These components are: the reader interacts with the text using his/ her abilities, various sources of knowledge such as linguistic and discourse knowledge, and experiences, the text which might be a printed or electrics text, and the activity which includes the reader’s purposes and process Along this line of thought, Woolley (2011), for example, defines reading comprehension as the process of extracting meaning from the text while Pakhare (2011, p.1) considers it as “the level of understanding of a passage or text" Gagen (2007) defines reading comprehension as an active, complex, and important process in which the reader interacts with the text using his/her vocabulary knowledge and reading strategies As we know, the reading skill is one of the most basic skills in a foreign language learning and teaching, some foreign language teachers have continued to teach reading just as silent reading or reading aloud This reason, may contribute to students’ weakness in English in general and in reading in specific are still weak in English especially in reading Using the most appropriate reading method that can develop students’ reading ability could be a solution to this problem Reading comprehension skills To ensure students that acquire students reading comprehension skills before they read the text, readers need to have other skills such as: - Reading skills to find the necessary information (scanning) - General skimming skills to get the main content (skimming) - Ability to judge before reading - Ability to Make Inferences and/or Predictions - Ability to guess unknown words in context Common types of question in English reading comprehension passages in high school - Main idea questions - Detail questions in the passage (detail questions) - Details are mentioned in the article (stated detail questions) - Unstated detail questions - Vocabulary questions - Inference question Steps of teaching reading comprehension skills in the direction of students’competence development The Reading Comprehension lesson is conducted in three stages: a Pre - reading (Before reading) b While - reading (While reading) c Post – reading (After reading) The general purpose of each stage: - Before you read: create opportunities for students to identify the topic of the reading, introduce some necessary vocabulary to help students familiarize themselves with the reading - While you read: develop students' reading comprehension skills Completing tasks during this stage helps students expand their vocabulary, develop reading skills, and understand content - After you read: helps reinforce students' reading comprehension ability, and at the same time expands the topic they are learning with real life II The situation analysis The reality of teaching reading comprehension skills in Nam Dan high school From the fact, I found that the teaching of reading comprehension by the teachers in Nam Dan high school still has some limitations Many teachers still apply traditional teaching methods such as presentations and lectures, but not use active teaching methods such as applying information technology or designing games to increase students' interest Besides, in some Units (lessons) in 10-year English textbooks, the tasks (Task) in the textbooks weren’t designed as the format of questions in graduation exam However, in the teaching process, not all teachers redesign those activities This makes students passive in learning and creates boredom and loss of learning motivation Therefore, the practice of reading comprehension skills will not achieve the expected results Moreover, in the 10th English textbook program (10-year system), most of the question levels of some reading comprehension activities is quite simple, not create a challenge and motivation for quite good students as well as improve and expand vocabularies for children Student's interest in Reading Comprehension lesson at Nam Đan high school By surveying the students in grade 10D2 with questionnaire, we can see that, before participating in Reading Comprehension classes towards competence development, only students out of 42 students ( accounting for 11,9 %) rated that they were very interested in Reading Comprehension, 10 students (23,8 %) commented that they were interested Most students have little interest in this skill 13 students (30,9%), and even no interest at all (33,3%) 14 students The common reasons given by students are that this skill often has many long texts and many new words, so they are afraid and not want to learn In addition, most students not have the method to the Reading Comprehension test, and not have the skills to recognize the types of question In particular, the progress of Reading comprehension lessons is often too familiar and quite boring, the content of the tasks in the textbook (tasks) is quite easy They don’t create challenges for learners At that time, teachers did not really make a breakthrough in terms of lesson design Therefore, many students have not found much joy and interest in this lesson and the effectiveness of the Reading Comprehension lesson has not been good as expected Data of survey The results of the survey on students' reading comprehension skills before this experiential initiative has not been applied to the teaching, I obtained the following: Number Class of students Score of Reading Comprehension Test before applying the measure Good - 10 10D2 42 SL % 7,1 Quite good Medium Weak (6,5 - 8,5) (5 - 6) (< 5) SL % SL % SL % 10 23,8 11 26,2 18 42,8 It can be seen that the number of students with quite good and good reading comprehension skills in class 10D2 only accounts for 30,9 %, many students in class have poor reading comprehension skill, 29 out of 42 get the scores under the rest of the students mainly study English because this is a obligatory subject These data also shows me that they are still quite weak in reading comprehension skills, not really love and have appropriate methods to the exercises The students need to learn about how to reading comprehension task effectively and need more types of reading tasks which are suitable with the topics in their textbook Cause of problem 4.1 To the students - Most of the children not have a method to learn Reading Comprehension skills methodically and profoundly - The vocabulary of the students is quite small Some students’ ability to inferring, studying situations or understanding phrases is limited - Some students not clearly understand the importance of learning English, as well as have no passion, interest, not really responsible for th is subject 4.2 To the teacher Most teachers have focused on innovating English teaching methods, but have not created interest and motivation for students In addition, in the teaching process, some teachers only pay attention to imparting knowledge but have not designed lessons which are suitable for the students' abilities 4.3 To the textbook - Students in the same class are not equal in ability and level, so the available exercises in the textbook not meet the need of training and improving reading comprehension skills for all students at different levels - There are many Tasks (tasks) in the textbook that are not designed as the format of reading tasks with the reality of the new program, leading to low results in reading comprehension skills III Measures taken to solve the problem: To solve the problems most effectively, I combined following solutions together Specific instructions on how to identify and handle each type of reading comprehension questions for students - Basic types of question in reading comprehension exercises Question 1: Find the main idea of the passage Question 2: Infer to find implications (Inference) Question 3: Identify the information stated in the article (Stated detail) Question 4: Identify information not stated in the article (Unstated details) Question 5: Find antonyms (Vocabulary) Question 6: Find the word or phrase mentioned or referred to (Reference) Question 7: Identify where this information is mentioned in the article (Where questions) These questions are divided into the following types Type 1: Find the main ideas in the text Main ideas questions Kinds of questions Answer What is the topic of the passage? What is the subject of the passage? What is the main idea of the passage? What is the author’s main point in the passage? With what is the author primary concerned? Which of the following would be the best title? What is the author’s main purpose in the passage? Usually located at the beginning or end of paragraph If the main idea doesn’t appear at the beginning or at the end of the paragraph, we will leave it at the last after taking time to answer the detailed questions improve reading comprehension results for high school students and 21 (80,8%) of the teachers think that solutions are necessary, there is no opinion that the solution is less necessary or unnecessary From the survey, it can be seen that most teachers evaluated the suggested solutions at necessary and feasible level with the average score 3,2 In the process of applying the topic "Adapting reading comprehension questions in English 10 global success textbooks towards competence development to improve reading comprehension results for 10th graders." At the units, I find the content of knowledge and teaching activities that I offer to be feasible and effective, consistent with the goal of innovating current teaching methods, improving the quality of teaching and learning in the school The measures can be applied at all high schools across the province, not only in the 10th English textbook program but also in the current 11th and 12th grade English textbook program Link of the survey: https://forms.gle/PnsaeCgdkf1SA4en9 V Effectiveness of the study After giving the test to check the quality of the students, I started to carry out the following process: Stage 1: Teach students how to all kinds of reading questions, after this stage, students are really interested in learning reading skills I have observed that most of students their homework faster, and most students have improved in their thinking ability Specifically, after students took the reading comprehension test, their results of score increased dramatically Stage 2: Strengthening thematic exercises after a period of organizing instruction and teaching for students, I see a strong improvement in students’ learning outcomes So I did a second test to check the results and give the students more exercises to strengthen their skills Table - Results obtained after stage of the study before applying the method: Table 1: Average score of Reading Comprehension test of grade 10 D2 Class Number of students Score of Reading Comprehension Test before applying the measures 33 Good Quite good (9 – 10) 10D2 42 Medium Weak ( – 6) (