The difficulties in learning reading skill of english majored sophomores at tay do university

TAY DO UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE THE DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING READING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED SOPHOMORES AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY Supervisor: Bui Thị Truc Ly, M.A Student Name: Ly Nguyen Anh Khoa Code:1652220201051 Class: English 11A May 2020 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT A complete study would not be done without any assistance Therefore, the author who conducted this research gratefully gives acknowledgement to their support and motivation during the time of doing this research as a requirement of completing my English language First of all, I would like to express my endless thanks and gratefulness to my supervisor Mrs Bui Thi Truc Ly Her kindly support and continuous advices went through the process of completion of my thesis Her encouragement and comments had significantly enriched and improved my work Without her motivation and instructions, the thesis would have been impossible to be done effectively Secondly, I want to express my special thanks to all lecturers in Faculty of Linguistic and Literature of TDU for their teaching and helping me to enlarge knowledge of English over the past four year My special thanks approve to my parents for their endless love, care and have most assistances and motivation me for the whole of my life I also would to explain my thanks to my sibling, brothers and sister for their support me all the time At last, my deeply thanks come to all my friend during time I study in Tay Do University COMMENTS ASTRACT Reading comprehension is a necessary skill throughout schooling and a vital component of the successful transition to adult responsibilities It is the complex outcome of the process of constructing meaning from print This study is carried out to investigate the difficulties in Reading comprehension of English majored sophomores at Tay Do University In other words, the study aims to find out whether student face problems in Reading and their causes The participants of this study are 60 English- majored sophomores (course XIII) at Tay Do University Questionnaire is used in this study as a tool to collect data The result of the research reveals that students encounter many difficulties in Reading involving in Vocabulary, Grammar, Background knowledge, Reading strategy, Psychology factors CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Reading is one of the most important skill in learning foreign language, especially English Reading deficiency in English texts among the university students reflects the students’ poor academic performance which the concern of language teachers as well as learners Teacher should have effective reading strategy for the students to gain better reading comprehension Obviously, people cannot deny the role of Reading comprehension By reading, someone can obtain much information For the students who study English, reading is not only reading something but also comprehending its content Reading comprehension is a process involving the understanding of the reading text itself Broughton et al (2002: 89) state, “Reading is a complex skill, that is to say that it involves a whole series of lesser skill.” By reading, students will be able to identify and to understand any kinds of text in English Wahyudin (2011:53) also writes, “Since reading becomes one of the basic ways of obtaining information, it is therefore considered as an important activity in any language classes.” Therefore if students have a bad reading skill, they will face many challenges in their studies and their future jobs However, there are many barriers that hinders students’ Reading The causes of difficulties in Reading are multiple and complex Many studies have demonstrated that learners face some difficulties in learning reading Because of the importance of reading comprehension as well as unknown causes for Reading difficulty, this study is carried out to find out some the difficulties in learning Reading skill of English majored sophomores at Tay Do University Knowing the causes will help learners find the suitable ways to improve their Reading Comprehension 1.2 Significance of the study Reading also is the most important thing in learning English If the people can read and know the meaning in a text, they can improve a lot knowledge from their major to background and through that they can rise their living standard and develop country This study contributes to find out the difficulties in in learning Reading skill of English majored sophomores at Tay Do University it also encourage students find out the appropriate methods to improve their Reading skill Besides, teacher can realize their students’ difficulties and choose the suitable teaching method or materials This study is also a useful material for those who want to use the findings as a basis for further study in this area 1.3 The organization of study This study includes five chapters Chapter 1: introduction Chapter 2: Literature review Chapter 3: Research aim- Research question- Hypothesis Chapter 4: Research methodology Chapter 5: Expected outcomes CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter presents the definition of reading and its importance, difficulties in learning reading comprehension and strategies of learning 2.1 Definition of Reading Reading is an activity to understand the content of the text that we read By reading, reader can get any message and information which can increase knowledge According to Pang et al (2003), reading is about understanding written texts and comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences and connected text Reading comprehension involves both perception and thought Readers will use background of knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, and other strategies to help them to understand a written text It means reading is a process of communication between the writer and the reader The writer has a message such feeling, facts, ideas, and arguments they want to share Then, the writer puts the message into the words So, reading is a way in which something interpreted or understood Reading does not only mean to understand the words or the grammar It is not only translating but also is thinking, in order to read well in English reading material text, and the reader must think what the text means According to Urquhart and Weir (1998 : 22) : “ Reading is the process of receiving and interpreting information encoded in language form via the medium of print” This means that the message conveyed by the text is decoded and interpreted through the vocabulary items, the grammatical points, and the rhetorical structure of the text Moreover, Anderson (1999 :1 ) views : “ Reading is an active fluent process which involves the reader and the reading materials in building meaning” The word “ reading” may have different interpretations For example, it could mean “reading aloud” which is considered as an oral matter that relates more to pronunciation rather than to comprehension In this sense, it is recommended to introduce simple and familiar text which not exceed the linguistic capacities of learners On the other hand, the term « reading » could also mean “ silent reading” It is likely the nearest approach to the process of reading In addition, reading can be viewed as a receptive skill in understanding the words in a written form It is believed that understanding the purpose of someone is not only in spoken language but also through reading because it is the next step in writing According to Nunan (1991:70): “ Reading is a dynamic process in which the text elements interact with other factors outside the text, in this case most particularly with the readers’ knowledge of content of the text” That is to say that readers combine different factors in order to build up the text meaning They rely on their background knowledge, their language knowledge, and the text content in order to reach adequate comprehension English is a foreign language for students of Tay Do University It is certainly not easy for students to interpret the meaning or the idea from written text Because to understand the reading text, the students must have a good competence in knowing the meaning of words, sentences, contents, and the most important is to know about the writer ideas It is agreed that reading is the ability to read text and understand its meaning In that sense, comprehension requires the reader to be an active contructure of meaning by dint of comprehension strategies Many scholars ( e.g., Eskey, 2002; Gascoigne, 2005; Khalaji & Vafaeeseresht, 2012 ) have asserted that reading comprehension is a complex process to witch different approaches In summary, Reading is a key to connect everything from the past to the future, from one culture to the other one, from one nation to the others Almost knowledge in the world had stored as text and English is the world language , so we had to hold reading to use or to learn the infinity knowledge 2.2 The importance of reading skill In today’s world, reading is basic to everyday life As children we learn to read, and as adults, we read to learn We read to learn about the news, to learn about rules, and to learn about how to things We also use reading to learn English Still, reading is seen by Goodman (1970) as a selective process which involves partial use of available language cues selected from reader’s expectations If you want to learn English more quickly, reading is important Good reading supports much in learning other skill in language acquiring process The more you read, the more input your brain gets about how the language works When you read in English, you can improve your vocabulary, your grammar, and your writing skills at the same time 2.3 Difficulties in learning reading Difficulty is something that complicated to (Richard 2007, as cited in Wahab 2012) It will be seen from students’ mistake or error learning process In fact, many students often find the difficulties in reading comprehension These difficulties result the student’s poor performance in reading test Therefore, from these factors arise some difficulties in reading comprehension 2.3.1 Vocabulary The student expands their knowledge of vocabulary while he is reading a passage, such as by finding out new words meaning in dictionary and guessing the meaning from the context Context helps students making a general prediction about the meaning (Sharpe, 2005) That means that making prediction from context will help students understand the meaning of a passage without stopping looks up every new word in a dictionary In fact, one of the problems readers have difficulties in understanding material is that they have lack of vocabularies Francie (2017) in his article proposed the importance of vocabulary on reading success that can be summarized into Comprehension improves when you know what the words mean Since comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading, students cannot overestimate the importance of vocabulary development Words are the currency of communication A sohisticated vocabulary improves all areas of communication — listening, speaking, reading and writing When children and adolescents improve their vocabulary, their academic and social confidence and competence improve, too It shows that Vocabulary represents one of most important skills necessary for teaching and learning a foreign language It is the basis for the development of all the other skills: reading comprehension, listening comprehension, speaking, writing, spelling and pronunciation Vocabulary is the main tool for the students to use English effectively Intentional vocabulary acquisition is memorizing straightforwardly term after term with their respective translations from a list Intentional learning is quick and usually preferred by learners, but it is also superficial Learners find vocabulary in an isolated, often infinitive form and remain incapable of using it correctly in context Moreover, intentionally learned vocabulary sinks faster Recommendable vocabulary acquisition pushes learners to every term, embedding it deeply and solidly in the mental lexicon (Aitchison in Alizadeh, 2016) In other words, students are expected not only memorize the words and the meanings but also use them in the correct context According to a research done by Rohmatillah (2014), there are some factors causing difficulties in learning vocabulary (1) the difference between written form and the spoken form in English, (2) the large number of words students have to learn or master, (3) the limited knowledge about words, (4) the complexity of word knowledge Knowing a words involves much more than knowing its dictionary definition, (5) causes of lack of understanding of grammatical of the words, (6) the incorrect pronunciation is often caused by the lack of sound similarity between English and the students‟ native language From the factor number 3, it is clearly stated that knowledge of vocabulary is really important in the process of mastering vocabulary Some previous studies proposed games as media to teach vocabulary A study held by Silsüpür (2017) found that in reality, there was not a significant difference between the results of the quiz Similarly, the findings of the questionnaire indicated that the participants preferred learning through vocabulary games rather than traditional way The findings also revealed that games reduce negative feelings during the learning process It suggested that teachers should reconsider the role of games and appreciate their educational value In other words, negative feelings can also influence the process of learning in the classroom and fun activities such as game can reduce the feelings to make students feel more comfortable and master or understand the lesson better telephone directory to find a phone number Scanning helps the reader find information quickly without reading the whole text EXTENSIVE READING In extensive reading, the readers usually face a longer text In reading, the readers need a total understanding of writing According to Brown (2001), extensive reading is carried out to achieve a general understanding of a text Long and Richards (1987) identify extensive reading as occurring when the students read large amounts of high interest material, concentrating of meaning, reading for gist and skips unknown the words So, the aims of extensive reading are to build the readers’ confidence and enjoyment INTENSIVE READING Intensive reading is reading for detail It usually has a shorter text A reader usually wants to get some specific information According to Macleod (2011), intensive reading exercises may include looking at main ideas versus details, understanding of what the text implies, making inferences, looking at the order of information and how it affects the message, identifying words that connect one idea to another and identifying words that indicate change from one section to another 2.3.4 Poor background knowledge There’s a lot going on in reading, from letter and word recognition to understanding meaning at the phrase, sentence, and paragraph level When a beginner reader encounters vocabularies they not know or not recognize due to inaccurate decoding, they are likely to skip ahead The more blanks in a line of text, the harder it is to make meaning and the more cognitively challenging and frustrating the reading task becomes That’s why poor comprehension can result when a student struggles with decoding, has a limited vocabulary or attempts to read a text that is at too high of a level Student with poor background knowledge can study Reading well because they can not understand what the Reading passage want to convey even they know all the words in the text Therefore, student should find many different reading topic to expand their knowledge 2.3.5 Psychology factors Reading, as one of the receptive skills, has a significant role to connect people to people through written text Reading plays important role both in daily and academic life Through reading, it can develop knowledge and information around the world But now the student often acquired some regular mistake that can be make the English never grow up They don’t focus on reading then just focus on listening and speaking because listening and speaking are the main point of English But, they don’t know through reading they can learn English easier than just learning through listening more or speaking a lot And one more thing, major of students feel reading is waste time and it seems nonsense Therefore, the students forgot they can’t learning anything without reading book or something like book In the course of time, all knowledge is transmitted in writing on pages so can reading book or text is very important if they want to improve anything The last thing is lazy reading, it very dangerous to any one in any work They can’t anything with the laziness Reading is very necessary for the students who want to learn English in general and learn the second languages in particular Reading has an important part in learning a language From the researchers' point of view, it is the ability to capture information from documents accurately and efficiently There are three factors that influence the reading process: text, the reader's background knowledge and related contexts to understand the text Moreover, they not have any motivation in learning Reading While speaking, listening brings the clearer benefits, Reading actually support much in those skills which nor everyone can realize Reading a lot of English documents will gradually become a good habit You will no longer search for knowledge on the internet in Vietnamese and instead there are new knowledge that will help you have many good ideas at work Of course when reading English, words and phrases will repeat a lot and The English permeates deeper You will gradually forget what you have learned without contact with it The English vocabulary, common words and phrases that are repeated many times through reading can help you remember them more deeply Certainly reading book isn’t not missing for each person because from famous books in English, you can have better thinking, more coherent writing And reading can help you update knowledge faster and improve easier CHAPTER 3: Research aim- Research question- Hypothesis 3.1 Research aims This research is conducted to explore the difficulties in Reading skill of English majored sophomores at Tay Do University and recommend the suitable ways to improve Reading skill 3.2 Research questions This study aims to answer the following research question: What are some difficulties in reading comprehension of English major sophomores at Tay Do University? 3.3 Hypothesis It is hypothesized that Tay Do University’s English majored sophomores might encounter some difficulties in reading skills such as vocabulary, grammar, psychological factors, reading strategy, and background knowledge CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4.1 Design This research is carried out to find out difficulties about reading comprehension of sophomores The participants are English-majored sophomores at Tay Do University who will be delivered questionnaires The reliability and validity of the research results are based on the instrument The data from the participants included closed and opened questions to collate and analyze easily The collected information of the instrument is quantitatively analyzed to show the difficulties in listening comprehension of Englishmajored sophomores at Tay Do University 4.2 Participants The participants in this study who are English majored sophomores at Tay Do University They are selected randomly They come from different areas, both rural and urban They speak Vietnamese as their mother tongue and speak English as a foreign language Most of them have the age of 20 Others are from 19 years old to 22 years old In addition, they have been learning English for years in secondary and high school They will be given questionnaires in order to get information about difficulties they have faced in learning English reading comprehension This helps to provide reliable results and generative findings of research 4.3 Instruments 4.3 Instruments Questionaire The questionaire includes questions and 22 statements and it is classyfied into the following groups: a Question to 11 – Students’ background b Statement 12 to 15 – Students’ difficulties in Vocabulary c Statement 16 to 19 – Students’ difficulties in Grammar d Statemet 20 to 23 – Students’s difficulties in Background knowledge e Statement 24 to 31 – Students’ difficulties in Learning method f Statement 32 to 35 – Students’ difficulties in Psychology factors 4.4 Procedure Duration (12 weeks) Step From the 1st week 3rd week Step From the 4th week to 8th week Activities - Correcting research title - Designing framework of research proposal - Designing questionnaire - looking for the information - writing chapter 1,2 - receiving teacher guidance - editing chapter 1,2 - writing chapter - editing chapter and getting teacher guidance for writing chapter 4,5 Step From the 9th week to 12th week - editing chapter 4,5 and receiving the advice of teacher - editing the whole research proposal - completing the research proposal CHAPTER EXPECTED OUTCOME Reading has an important role in teaching and learning a language From the researchers' point of view, it is the ability to capture information from documents accurately This research aim to point out some difficulties or common problems of students usually encounter 5.1 Vocabulary They often said that reading comprehension is a great way to learn vocabulary This view is not wrong, but imagine having a reading that is 70% new words and is it called reading comprehension ? Every word you see is new, you have to use the dictionary to look up the meaning of each word It takes time and not effective You don’t read comprehension, you are translating So before you want to read well, you need to have vocabulary English vocabulary is endless, even native English speakers may not know it all So you not need to learn too much, just grasp some common words for already You can develop more vocabulary through reading comprehension 5.2 Grammar English grammar is not simple, but not too giant as the vocabulary source There are many people who learn English but don't know how to identify phrasal verbs, phrasal verbs or sentence components Even people who learn English for many years still cannot remember the sentence structure of the basic tenses This is the factor that becomes the barrier of the reading process So you learn vocabulary, but must understand the basic grammar, distinguish active and passive sentences, single sentences, compound sentences, identify the type of words, tenses of words, to read effectively 5.3 Difficulty in Reading strategy Many people are still confused about their method of learning English They everything they can hear or read somewhere, but don't know their own method Your major is English so you should know the best way you learn and apply it effectively I can introduce you to a method of reading comprehension that has been applied successfully by many people: Skimming - Reading details - Summary of reading text in mother language Skim: Read through the title, underlined words, italic and bold in the paragraph to guess the basic content of the reading Read the details: This time you will read in more detail, you can highlight new words, important phrases and understand the content of the text Summary: After completing reading comprehension, you practice the summary to re-test your knowledge after reading Carrying out this research , the researcher hopes to find the reading difficulties in comprehension of English majored at Tay Do University and suggest ways to overcome those difficulties 5.4 Background knowledge Background knowledge show the understanding of the readers to the aspects of the world These knowledge may be from every fields like education, science, art Students could face the difficulties with unfamiliar topic although they know all the words in the reading text That the reason why the extensive Reading was made to adapt the need of the reader However, to be a smart learners, we should vary the topics to read to widen our knowledge and study new vocabulary 5.5 Psychological factors Reading is an important skill in foreign language learning process When student not realize the importance, they will feel lazy to study Moreover, the motivation plays an important role in study Reading Students feel afraid to read long text with many new words, complicated grammatical structure that is easy to make learners feel boring or hard to connect to it To solve this problem, they need to find a suitable sized reading for yourself If they are a beginner, they can choose a short reading, then raise to a mediumlength reading Remember that there is no shortcut to success, so don't try to challenge yourself excessively REFERENCES Abraham, P (2002) Skilled reading: Top-down, bottom-up Field Notes, 10(2) Cain, K., Oakhill, J., & Bryant, P (2004) Children’s reading comprehension ability:Concurrent prediction by working memory, verbal ability, and component skills Journal of Educational Psychology, 96(1), 31-42 Palincsar, A S., & Brown, A L (1984) Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities Cognition and instruction, 1(2), 117175 Freeman, D L and Long M H (1990) An Introduction to second Language Acquisition Research Newyork: Longman Grellet, F (1981) Developing Reading Skills: A Practical Guide to Reading Comprehension Exercises Cambridge University Press.Islam, C and Steenburgh, C (2009) A good Read Book: Developing Strategies for Effective Reading Singapore: Cengage Learning Asia Osborne and Armbuster Mei- Yun, Y (1988) Teaching Efficient EFL Reading, In: Teacher Development Making the Right Move Vol 17 (Thomas Kral, editor), English Language Program Devision, Washington D C, 179-188 Vener, D (2002) Landmark School Outreach Program: Finding the Main Idea idea Accessed on November th, 2016 Hartney, R (2011) Investigating reading difficulties in English second language of Grade learners in one primary school in the Khomas education region of Namibia (Unpublished master thesis) The University Of Namibia Kirby, J.R & Savage, R.S (2008) Can the simple view deal with the complexities of reading? Literacy, 42, 75-82 Alsamadani, H.A (2008) The relationship between Saudi EFL college-level students' use of reading strategies and their EFL reading comprehension (Unpublished doctoral dissertation) Ohio University Zuhra, (2015) Senior High School Students Difficulties In Reading Comprehension ENGLISH EDUCATION JOURNAL (EEJ), 6(3), 424-441 Wolf, M & Bowers, P (1999) The double-deficit hypothesis for the developmental dyslexias Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 415-438 Yunus, K., Mohamad, M., & Waelateh, B (2016) The breadth of receptive vocabulary knowledge among English major university students Journal of Nusantara Studies, 1(1), 7-17 Zwiers, J (2008) Building academic language: Essential practices for content classrooms, grades 5-12 San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass Catts, H., Hogan, T., & Adolf, S (2005) Developmental changes in reading and reading disabilities In H Catts & A Kamhi (Eds.), Connections between language and reading disabilities (pp 25–40) Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Hillyard, S (2016) English through Drama: Creative Activities for Inclusive ELT Classes ELT Journal 71(3) pp.393-395 Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article-abstract/71/3/393/3098253 Klimova, Blanka (2015) Games in Teaching of English Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 191(1) pp 1157-1160 Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042815025720 APPENDIX A QUESTIONARE Dear friends My name is: Ly Nguyen Anh Khoa This questionnaire is designed for our study namely ” Some difficulties in English reading comprehension of the English majored sophomores at Tay Do university” in completing these questions, please choose the answer by circling the letter next to your choice, ticking off these items in a checklist or expressing your ideas in the blanks All your personal information as well as your answer be kept confident and not be used for other purposes Thanks for your help Part 1: Your knowledge background Students’ information Students name:…………………………… Age: ……………………………………… Gender: …………………………………… Where are you from:……………………… Please circling the letter next to your choice, or expressing your ideas in the blanks: Which skill you think easiest ? A Reading B Listening C Writing D Speaking How you think about your English level ? A Begeinner B Elementary C Intermediate D Advance Do you think reading is important ? A Yes B No How often you learn English everyweek ? A Always B Sometimes C Rarely D Never Other :…………………………………………………………………… What is the hardest course of difficulties in reading English ? Your answer……………………………………………………………………… Part : The problems affecting to reading English skill Please check (x) in the column that best fits your opinion in each statement in the following table according the 5-degree scale including ( ) Total agree ( ) Agree ( ) Neutral ( ) disagree ( ) Total disagree Statements Total Agree Neutral disagree Total agree (1) English is an important language of student Is the reading comprehension easy ? You can read and understand almost text you read Reading English novel is good way to improve reading 10 Listening and reading always come together 11 Understanding the long text is more difficult than the short text disagree (2) (3) (4) (5) 12 You don’t need vocabulary to read a text 13 You can understand almost the Specialized readings 14 You can make everyone understand when you don’t have enough vocabulary 15 Vocabulary is one of skills need for reading comprehension 16 You can understand the read or text without grammar 17 The read or text don’t have right grammar can help you improve English 18 Everyone can understand what you write without grammar 19 The grammar is useless in English 20 You can’t understand the text or read with poor knowledge 21 You can understand the text without background 22 You don’t need many knowledge to learn reading 23 Background knowledge is important in reading 24 You can understand the text easier without skimming 25 You can read the text faster without extensive reading 26 You can understand the text faster without scanning 27 You can understand the text easier without intensive reading 28 You can improve English by many exercises as you can 29 You just take care the listening and speaking if you want to good at English 30 If you want to improve English you just speaking with another as posible as you can 31 Reading text or book in English is watsing time 32 You feel difficuilt in reading a long text 33 You feel reading short text is easy 34 You can understand the short text easier than the long text 35 You can understand the text or read easier when you know a lot of words in it Thanks for your cooperation !