Problems in learning english reading skill of english majored freshmen at tay do university

TAY DO UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE PROBLEMS IN LEARNING ENGLISH READING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY Supervisor: Wa Thai Nhu Phuong, MA Student’s name: Truong My Dung Student’s code: 13D220201051 Class: Bachelor of English 8B Can Tho, April 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This research proposal could hardly finish without enthusiastic help of many people First of all, I want to express my deep gratitude toward my supervisor, Ms Wa Thai Nhu Phuong, MA at Tay Do University This proposal could not have been completed without her enthusiastic, thoughtfulness and informative Actually, she instructed, commented and provided me useful references and material so that I could complete my research proposal In addition, she spent her valuable time on guiding and encouraging me during the time I was conducting the research Secondly, I want to show my special thanks to all lecturers in the Faculty of linguistics and literature of Tay Do University for their teaching and helping me widen knowledge of English over the past four years I also would like to extend my special thanks to the Faculty of linguistics and literature of Tay Do University for giving me the opportunity and permission to carry out the proposal research Finally, I want to give my wholehearted thankful words to my family for the love and support They always encouraged and motivated me during my studying process COMMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT COMMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 The significance of study 1.3 The organization of the proposal CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 The definitions of reading 2.2 The importance of reading 2.3 Problems in reading 2.3.1 Lack of vocabulary 2.3.2 Lack of grammatical knowledge 2.3.3 Lack of background knowledge 2.3.4 Lack of reading strategies 2.3.5 Lack of motivation 2.4 Previous study CHAPTER III: RESEARCH AIMS – RESEARCH QUESTION – HYPOTHESIS 3.1 Research aims 3.2 Research question 3.3 Hypothesis CHAPTER IV: RESEARCH MOTHODOLOGY 10 4.1 Research design 10 4.2 Participants 10 4.3 Instrument: Questionnaire 10 4.4 Procedure 11 CHAPTER V: EXPECTED OUTCOMES 12 REFERENCES APPENDIX ABSTRACT Reading is one of the important subjects of learning English This research aims to investigate problems in learning English reading skills of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University In this study, questionnaire is used as the instrument to collect data The participants are thirty students from English majored freshmen course 11 at Tay Do University The findings of the research will point out the reading problems of the English majored freshmen at Tay Do University These problems could be related vocabulary, grammar knowledge, background knowledge, reading strategies and motivation After all, this study is expected to help students identify the problems they have faced when they learn English reading skill CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Although there are thousands of languages all over the world, and each country has their own national languages in addition to a variety of local languages spoken and understood by their people in different regions However, English language is a common language to communicate In other words, English is considered as the international language because it is used popularly in several areas such as tourism, medicine, business and so on Students in Vietnam have many opportunities through learning English It is one of the necessary requirements for those who want to get a good job or continue to study in higher education Rajendra Naidu, principal of M.V PreUniversity College said: “Be a good reader to become a good leader” So, reading skill is also an essential part of success that students should improve better To study reading skill well, students have faced many problems in learning process Firstly, lack of vocabulary is their common problem They not have enough vocabulary to read the English texts, documents and books Next, grammar also makes them felt embarrassed in understanding content Psychology or background knowledge are also issues that cause difficulty to students This study is conducted to figure out the problems of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University in learning English reading skill 1.2 The signification of study The study show the student’s problems when learning English reading skill Based on the problems stated in this research, students can realize their own difficulties to self-correct 1.3 The organization of the proposal The proposal includes five chapters: Chapter I: Introduction Chapter II: Literature Review Chapter III: Research aim – Research question – Hypothesis Chapter IV: Research Methodology Chapter V: Expected Outcome CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions of reading Reading is an important skill which are both receiving information and transmitting it Through reading skill, students get most of the information required in teaching and learning in everyday life Harmer (1989: 153) views reading from a different perspective In his definition, “Reading is an exercise dominated by eyes and the brain The eyes receive the message and the brain has to work out the significance of the message” When reading, eyes will work and the brain will analyze the data of the reading to find the keyword In addition, Williams (1986) states that “Reading is a process that reader can see and understand the reading information The efficiency of reading should be read in a group of words and try to understand some of the sentences but not all of the information” Just understand the main meaning, you can understand the whole paragraph to say Through students will not spend more time on a test than reading the whole thing And Frank Smith (1982) also says that “Reading as the process of interpretation and understanding of the contents It means the reader will try to find the answers while they read the writings of the author not only read it out but also know the meaning of every word” Reading is not to understand each word word by word, but to understand the content that the author wants to say Find the truths and meanings in each lesson to help students make progress Moreover, Wikipedia defines “Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols (to translate symbols sounds or visual representation of speech) in order to construct or derive meaning (comprehension) It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, of sharing information and ideas Like all language, it is a complex interaction between the text and the reader which is shaped by the Readers’ knowledge, experiences, attitude and language community which is culturally and socially situated” Reading helps broaden the eye, acquiring a wealth of knowledge about culture, society, tourism, health Reading also provides people with new information that leads to growing awareness Attempts to define reading have been numerous However, the skill of reading is not easily described, and many studies try to help student familiar with reading subject and also reading skill 2.2 The importance of reading Reading is probably one of the most beneficial and feasible activities that people can It is through reading that a person is going to be able to discover new ideas, concepts, places, and people Some people even describe reading as a journey that starts as the opening of a page, and finish as the last page is turned With relaxed mind and soul, it also improves your thinking process Reading skill is the best way to learn in school Without having the reading ability, it is difficult for the students to homework and need information assignment such as book, websites The first reason is that reading help to develop verbal abilities Although reading cannot be communicated, it tends to give students more words to express their emotions and to convince others This increases the higher level of vocabulary for use in everyday life The vocabulary is essential for student’s learning English Second, reading is a chance to widen knowledge and reduce stress Books offer an outstanding wealth of learning and at a much cheaper price than taking a course By reading, it will increase student’s concentration and provide a lot of useful information for their study 2.3 Problems in reading 2.3.1 Lack of Vocabulary For the majority of students, vocabulary of specialized fields caused difficulties for them while reading text The vocabulary is meaningful in this are presented with one of the three components of background knowledge, context, transparency, and familiarity One theory concerning why prior knowledge affects comprehension is the ability of the students to make inferences Background knowledge which is also referred to as subject knowledge or topic familiarity of learners about the reading skill has been investigated in English literature for years The theoretical base of the background theory is the schema theory, according to which comprehension includes two elements: one the linguistic element which is responsible for decoding text and transmitting the information to the brain, and the conceptual elements which relates this information to pre-existing knowledge structure, namely the schema Based on this theoretical perspective, several studies have been conducted and indicated that English majored benefit from having background knowledge of the reading texts Studies showing the advantages of background knowledge on English reading have operationalized background knowledge in different ways As an example, a few studies investigated background knowledge based on the culture highlighted in the text and concluded that when readers could become familiar with that culture, they had a better comprehension performance (e.g., Johnson, 1982; Lee, 2007; Alptekin, 2006) 2.3.4 Lack of reading strategies Perhaps, this is the most difficult problem of students’ reading Students are not familiar with the skills to use such as methods of reading comprehension for the main idea reading faster to find information, content from the title, subtitle, pictures illustration Therefore, students can hardly understand the content and process information related to the reading as homework or answer comprehension questions In addition, reading is closely related to reading competence Students who not read in their free time often face problems during their reading assignments and thus many perform poorly in reading test For example, skimming and scanning are two equally important reading strategies Skimming is a method of rapidly moving the eyes over text with the purpose of getting only the main ideas and a general overview of the content Scanning is very useful for finding a specific name, date, statistic, or fact without reading the entire article If students lack these skills, the reading speed will be reduced and obstruction of time 2.3.5 Lack of motivation In trying to improve students reading motivation, it is vital that educators must know what stimulate students motivation to read and think of some strategies to improve students reading ability As Spangler (2000) recommended that if students are to become mature and effective readers, they must have the skills Wigfield and Guthrie (1997) noted that students are thought to be motivated extrinsically which is reading for an external reward or intrinsically that is for the sake or value of doing something and that an engaged reader is someone who reads for the sake of reading and not for a grade or for other external incentives They claimed that reading motivation does not only explain why some people read more than others but also how people utilize the strategic skills which allow him or her to engage in the reading They emphasized that without motivation students will less likely be using metacognitive strategies such as using prior knowledge, searching for information, self-monitoring, and are less likely to read In this sense, motivational variables, such as self-efficacy, interest, and autonomy, are greatly influential in reading engagement which is an integration of social, cognitive, and motivational aspects 2.4 Previous studies G.Reid Lyon (2000) conducted a study on “Why some student have difficulties learning to read?” She was an English teacher in London, and she want to find out the reasons why her students faced problems in reading subject There was fifty students doing a test The results showed that the students who lacked reading skill took more time to read a test because they didn’t understand new words Another the study of Yu-han Ma and Wen-ying Lin (2014) showed the overall and relative contribution of four subcomponents of vocabulary knowledge to reading comprehension The four vocabulary subcomponents were vocabulary size, word association knowledge, collocation knowledge, and morphological knowledge The participants were 124 college students from a university in Taipei, Taiwan Six instruments were employed: (1) a reading comprehension test, (2) a vocabulary size test, (3) a test on word association knowledge and collocation knowledge, (4) a test of morphological knowledge, (5) motivation attitude scale, and (6) a self-efficacy scale The results showed that the effects of vocabulary and self-efficacy have been controlled CHAPTER III RESEARCH AIMS – RESEARCH QUESTIONS - HYPOTHESIS 3.1 Research aim This research aims to find out the problems in learning English reading skills of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University The most important purpose of this study is to find difficulty in learning English reading 3.2 Research question This study is required to answer the following research question What are difficulties in learning English reading skill of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University? 3.3 Hypothesis Most of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University confirms that reading is a difficult skill Although they have been learning reading in many lessons, they still have faced some problems in English reading Through the literature review and research question, it is hypothesized that the English majored freshmen are face could some problems in reading including vocabulary, grammar knowledge, background knowledge, reading strategies and motivation CHAPTER IV RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4.1 Research Design The study aims to find out the problems that English majored freshmen are facing in learning English reading skills To make achievements for the purpose, the students who are English majored freshmen are chosen as the sample of the survey The data from the participants will be collected through the questionnaire The collected information will be analyzed to show difficulties in learning English reading skills of the English majored freshmen at Tay Do University 4.2 Participants The participants of this research are thirty English majored freshmen at Tay Do University (English 11) They are 18-22 years old and come from different areas, both rural and urban The students speak Vietnamese as their mother tongue and learn English as the second language The students will answer the questionnaire about problems that they have faced in English reading skill 4.3 Instrument Questionnaire is used to collect the participants’ ideas about problems in English reading skills of the English majored freshmen They will give their personal opinions on the basis of available questions in the research process Therefore, questionnaire is used as the instrument in this study 4.3.1 Questionnaire The questionnaire includes two parts Part consists of six questions about the students’ background and attitude toward in reading skill From the question to question 6, they are student’s hometown (urban/rural), students’ years of studying English In part 2, there are twenty statements listed in a table The problems consist of lack of vocabulary (1,3,5,7), lack of grammatical knowledge (2,4,6,8), lack of background knowledge (9,13,15,17), lack of reading strategies (10,12,18,20) and 10 lack of motivation (11,16,14,19) The participants will tick their on a five degree scale including “strongly agree”, “agree”, “no idea”, “disagree” and “strongly disagree” 4.4 Procedure This research proposal was done within 12 weeks and the process was divided into steps in the following table: Time (12 weeks) Activities in research process - Choosing the topic Step 1: from the 1st week to - Designing framework of the research/ outline 2nd week - Designing questionnaires and interview - Looking for references - Writing chapter and chapter - Getting the teacher’s guidance - Editing chapter 1, 2, the questionnaires and rd Step 2: from the week to 7th week interview - Writing chapter - Writing chapter 4,5 and getting the teacher’s guidance Step 3: from 8th week to 12th week - Editing chapter 3, 4, and temporary completion of the main content in the research 11 CHAPTER V EXPECTED OUTCOMES Reading plays an important role in learning English Student majoring in English usually face many problems when learning it This research aims to find out the common problems in learning English reading skills of English majored freshmen including lack of vocabulary, grammar, background knowledge and reading strategies The purpose of finding difficulties in English reading skill for English majored freshmen is to help students identify their own failures and problems These problems may include: 5.1 Lack of vocabulary Vocabulary knowledge is a tool for learners to establish and succeed in communication With little vocabulary, they also will not be able to read more advanced materials, so they will lose the opportunity to expand their vocabulary and strategies to read better the harder it is to succeed This research hopes students can recognized the important of learning vocabulary and find more materials to increase their vocabulary knowledge 5.2 Lack of grammatical knowledge When using basic grammar, it is difficult for students to gain access to advanced materials Grammar is one of the essential elements in learning English Lack of grammar knowledge causes students not to accurately understand the content that the author wants to convey Thank to this study, it is expected that the students can recognize how important their grammatical knowledge is in reading Therefore, they could try to improve their grammatical knowledge by doing many exercises on sentence structure, tenses (past, present, future) 5.3 Lack of background knowledge Background knowledge is the knowledge that students need to learn every day Lack of background knowledge makes it difficult for students about creation, initiative and reality After this study, I hope that the students will find out the ways 12 to broaden their background knowledge Maybe they can be read news or search information on the Internet 5.4 Lack of reading strategies Lack of reading strategies creates lazy habits so students never finish reading long documents Students not read according to their purpose and get the information because they waste time on reading This research hopes to help students know about the reading strategies 5.5 Lack of motivation Lack of motivation causes feelings of boredom, not interested in learning reading So, the students will be unconfident and passive and high academic failure Motivation is the most important for the learner so this study hopes never lose it Thank to this study, I hope the teachers could recognize the motivation is very important for their students to make progress in reading process Therefore, they could find out some effective ways to create interesting atmosphere in class to atract student’s attention 13 REFERENCES ●♥●♥●♥●♥● Clay, M (1996) Reading recovery (updated.) Auckland: Heinemann Education Frank Smith (1982) A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read Retrieved from: http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/smith- understanding-reading.pdf Greanvey, V (Ed.) (2002) Promoting reading in developing countries: Views on making reading materials accessible to increase literacy levels Retrieved from: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ajelt/vol8/rev2.htm G.Reid Lyon (2000) The study about Why Some Children Have Difficulties Learning to Read Retrieved from: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/whysome-children-have-difficulties-learning-read Harmer (1989:153) Difficulties in teaching reading comprehension with the new English Retrieved from: http://xemtailieu.com/tai-lieu/difficulties-in-teachingreading-comprehension-with-the-new-english-textbook-tieng-anh-10-the-set-ofstandard-textbooks-to-the-10th-form-students-at-ke-sat-high-school-358556.html Hatch, E., & Lazaraton, A (1991) The research manual: Design and statistics for Applied Linguitics New York: Newbury House Jocobs, G.M (2003) Book wheels In R R Day (Ed.) New Ways in Teaching Reading (pp 5-6) Alexandria, VA: TESOL Peter Tze-Ming Chou (2011), The Effects of Vocabulary Knowledge and Background Knowledge on Reading Comprehension of Taiwanese EFL Students Retrieved from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0050 Nagy & Anderson (1984), Big ideas in beginning reading; center on teaching and learning Retrieved from: https://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/voc/voc_what.php West, Richard; Communication Turner, P.186 Lynn ISBN http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading (2010), Understanding 9780495908753 Interpersonal Retrieved from: APPENDIX QUESTIONAIRE FOR STUDENTS Dear friends, My name is Truong My Dung and I am a senior of English major I am very thankful to you for spending time helping me with this questionnaire This questionnaire is used to collect the necessary data for the research about “Problems in learning English reading skills of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University” So please take your time to fulfill those questions because its result is important to my study Thank you so much! Student’s full name: Age: Gender: Male Female Class: Please read the following questions and circle the appropriate answer for each questions Give specific answers if needed How long have you studied English? years Where are you from a Urban area b Rural area Which subject did you learn in high school? a Listening b Speaking c Reading d Grammar What you think about reading subject? a Very important b Important c Normal d Not important How is your reading skill? a Very good b Good c Normal d Not good How many times a week did you practice reading to English? a times b times c times d Other: Please read the following statement and mark (x) in suitable column that you think reasonable Statements Lack of vocabulary causes you difficulty in reading You are lacking of grammatical knowledge Single words, phrases idioms, phrasal verbs or noun phrase are very difficult to deal with in reading You forget basic grammar structures when you read You cannot read much material because of poor vocabulary 6.When learning reading skill, lack of Strongly agree Agree No ideas Disagree Strongly disagree grammatical knowledge makes you unable to understand the text You have trouble with the new word You cannot identify sentence structures in the reading texts You have problems with unfamiliar reading topics in reading 10 You have to read times to understand the main idea 11 You not like reading 12 You lack reading strategies 13 The reading topics are strange to you 14 You feel bored to learn reading 15 You can understand the meeting of the text, but you not know what it is about 16 You lack motivation when learning reading skill 17 The lack of background knowledge makes your reading ability low 18 You not know how to skim and scan the information 19 Reading makes you bored and stressed 20 You spend a lot of time on a reading task due to lack of reading strategies THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP!