The effects of extensive reading on writing skill of english majored sophomores at tay do university

TAY DO UNIVERSITY F'ACULTY OF' LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE THE EFFECTS OF EXTENSIVE READII{G OI\WRITING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED SOPHOIVIORES AT TAYDO UIVVERSITY Supervisor: HUYNH THI TUYET HONG, M.A Student' name: TRAN THI TUOI Class: English Student' code: 115'i010064 TRUONG OAI HOC rAV O6 THTJ VIEI{ May 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all of the people who supported me to complete this study First and foremost, I would like to express my great thankfulness to my supervisor, Ms Huynh Thi Tuyet Hong, for her valuable guidance, assistance and encouragement that helped me in all stages, of this study Without her help and support, I would have been much trouble to ccirnplete my study I want to thanks my participants to English 8c who supported and cooperated withme My special thanks to my classmates, my close friends who shared materials and helped me enthusiastically when I had to face with many problems ln addition, I want to acknowledge my parents for their love and sacrifice as well as their encouragement is a strong motivation for me so that I can finish this study Finally, I would like to thanks all people who direct and indirect helped me complete my study in time COMMENTS ll CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION l.l Rationale I 1.2 Aims ofthe study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 The significance of the study 1.5 The organization of the study J CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions of reading 2.2 Definitions of extensive reading 2.3 Deflrnitions of writing 2.4 The effects of extensive reading on writing 2.5 The reasons why we should learn writing through reading CHAPTER3: METHODOLOGY l CIIAPTER 4: RESULTS AI\D DISCUSSIONS 12 4.1 Results 4.1.1 Results of the 4.l.l.l The 12 questionnaire students'background 12 12 4.1.1.2 Students' attitude about learning English and reading-writing combination 16 4.1.1.3 Students' attitude towards extensive readirrg l9 4.1.1.4 The benefits that students can get from extensive reading 20 4.l.2Resultsfromtheinterview 4.1.3 The comparative study 4.2 Discussion 21 25 25 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION, LIMITATIONS AI\[D RECOMMENDATIONS 1V LIST OF'F'IGURES Figurel : Students'living environment Figure 2: The subjects that students like Figure 3: Students 'eagemess in ! reading 14 Figure 4: The amount of time for reading every day 14 Figure 5: The sigrificance of learning English l6 Figure 6: The importance of reading 17 Figure 7: Students'point ofview about extensive reading l9 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The kinds of materials that students often read l5 Table 2: The importance of writing ski11 18 Table 3: The findings ofparticipants' opinion towards the relationship between reading and writing 18 Table 4: Students' opinion about extensive reading is useful in develop writing ',;., skill 19 Table 5: Students'opinion about benefits of exensive reading 20 Table 6: Time for reading of group I and group 2l Table 7: Students' opinion about extensive reading of groups 21 Table 8: Students' opinion about extensive reading in group 22 Table 9: The aspects ofwriting were improved through extensive reading 23 Table l0: Students' mark of reading and time for reading 24 vl ABSTRACT Writing and reading are said to be an indispensable subjects which partly contributes to the success of leaming English In addition, many researchers claimed that reading and writing were closely associated to each other Therefore, the study was conducted to find out whether extensive reading had positive effects on writing skill of the second year students majoring in English at 1'ay Do University Data was collected from 30 students of English majored class (course VIII) at Tay Do University The instruments used in this study were questionnaire, interview and the comparative study through the level of reading and writing mark The findings ofthe study would point out the effects of extensive reading on writing skill of English majored sophomores vll CHAPTER INTRODUCTION This chapter describes in detail the rationale, the aims of the sndy, research questions, signi/icance of the study and the organizatipn of the stu$t l.l Retionele English nowadays has become an intemational language because in the world of globalization It is used in many aspects of our life such as economy, politics, science, technology, cofilmerce, art, information and entertainment When English has been popular, many students all over the world are trying to leam English as a second or foreign language Vietnam is not an exception from the wide spread of English Since the open-door policy, English has gained priority over other languages such as Chinese, French, Spain, Russian, etc However, learning English is not an easy process for students students want to study English effectively, In fact, if it is necessary for them to start learning four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing Most of Vietramese students like studying listening, speaking, reading more than writing They think that writing is a difficult subject because of lacking vocabulary, linguistic structures, information, background knowledge or social knowledge In addition, the writers cannot express their own ideas, thought and feeling correctly in English writing skill Those are evidences showing that writing is a difficult and complex skill for sfudents to master To solve these problems, there are several methods suggested by researchers all over the world Nevertheless, the linguists have finally found out that using extensive reading in writing skill can be a good strategy Through extensive reading, students can stimulate knowledge in many aspects in life such as society, art, economy, commerce, politics, literature, In addition, they not only learn how to organize ideas, how to use principles in a paragraph or in an essay but also imitate good writing styles from extensive reading materials This study chose the iurtl.ipurrt" were English majored sophomores at Tay Do University because the researcher thought that they used to learn or used to know about extensive reading Therefore, the researcher could collect information from them easily The research was conducted to investigate whether extensive reading affected English majored sophomores on writing skill and found out how their perceptions about the relationship between extensive reading and writing skill 1.2 Aims of the study This study examined whether extensive reading affected on writing skill of English majored sophomores at Tay Do University or not Furthermore, the study wanted to know what aspects that extensive reading impacted on English majored sophomores' writing skill 1.3 Research questions As an investigation into the effects of extensive reading on sophomores writing skill of English majored in Tay Do University, the study here tries to answer the following research questions: l Does extensive reading affect English majored sophomores' writing skill? What are the effects of extensive reading on writing skill of English majored sophomores at Tay Do University? 1.4 The signilicance ofthe study The study was expected to help students realize the relationship between extensive reading and writing Moreover, the study also determined that students could get which benefits from extensive reading activity It could be seen from table 7, group I thought that extensive reading was useful, very interesting, it was also a good way to improve writing skill However, the opinion of group opposed with group because l They didn't like extensive reading it was boring and they weren't interested in reading by English so much That was the reason why grotrp spent more time to read than group (see table 6) As the interview's result, question presented that all six participants often read books, newspaper and magazine in their free time Through extensive reading, they all agreed that extensive reading and writing skill were closely associated to each other Furthermore, students in group I had more specific opinions extensive reading (question implied thaQ Group Name Opinion I think extensive reading and writing skill are closely associated to each other because when A I read more, I can get information to apply in my writing In addition, extensive reading also helps me in review grammatical structures that I forgot I I B think they are associated to each other Because when I practice writing, it helps me to build writing skill I read extensively, I become better writer In my opinion, reading and writing are closely C associated to each other Reading affects writing and writing affects reading Table 8: Students' opinion about extensive reading in group 22 about ,l Most of the participants in this study said that writing was a,difficult skill Perhaps for this reason, there was only 7Yo of the participants like writing (see figure fuom questionnaire) and six participants in interview also agreed writing was not easy When being asked about question 5: "According to you, is writing a difficult skill? Why?", almost the respondents had different opinions When they started a writing, they often faced with many problems such as lack of vocabulary, grammatical structures, ideas, still affected by Vietnamese style, did not know how to begin the first sentence, cost too much time for a paragraph or in class, they did not have a lot of time to write, To solve these problems, they tried to use extensive reading Suddenly, the result was showed in the below table: Opinion Scale a Vocabulary 616 b Ideas 3/6 c Grammatical structures 316 d Organization 3/6 e Social knowledge t/6 Table 9: The aspects of writing were improved through extensive reading Vocabulary, ideas, grammatical structures and organization were fields that the participants though that they were more improved than social knowledge thanks to extensive reading Over a half of the participants agreed that 4.1.3 The comparative study In this section, we compared the students' reading -w.riting score with their time for reading The more students regularly read, the more their writing might be 23 improved The relationship between reading and writing was showed in below table: Group Name A B C D E F Time for An hour hours hours 30 30 30 reading aday aday aday minutes minutes minutes aday aday a day x-" Mark \ Reading 8.3 9.0 8.5 6.0 6.5 6.1 Writing 9.4 8.9 9.8 7.8 6.4 8.0 Table 10: Students' mark of reading -writing and time for reading As we can see clearly from the table l0 that group reading and time for reading higher than group A,B I has the average mark of and C have average reading mark is 8.6 and time for reading is hours a day In group 2, D, E, and F have average 6.2 of reading and only 30 minutes for reading a day Table 10 is an important evidence that showing the relationship between reading and writing The students in group I have average mark higher than those in group in term of reading and in writing From the result, it is possible to believe that if student read materials regularly such as books, newspaper, or magazine they will study reading effectively and that is the basic factor to accumulate knowledge and maybe their writing skill also will be improved significantly 24 4.2 Discussion The frndings of the questionnaire implied that many of sophomores from English majored class (8c) liked listening and speaking more than writing and reading It caused many obstacles when they studied writing and reading because when they did not like, they did not spend much time for them The figure from the questibnnaire presented this statement Moreover, maybe reading was an activity which cost a lot of time and the readers' patient Therefore, only few of the students read regularly Luckily, despite the fact that they did not enjoy reading and writing so much, they still realized their importance (question and from the questionnaire presented that) Furthermore, through many research of the linguists, sophomores in this study perceived the relationship between reading and writing Consequently, there was 83% of the students agreed that reading and writing were closely associated to each other However, writing was still a difficult subject for sophomores in this study Thanks to information from the interview, many difficulties of students were found when being asked:" According to you, writing is a difficult skill? why?", They said that they had to face with many problems such as lack of vocabulary, ideas of a topic, forgot grammatical structures, affected by Vietnamese style, In this extensive reading is an effective method to solve these problems extensively, they admitted that their vocabulary, ideas grammatical structures, were improved significantly case, After of a writing read topic, In summary, extensive reading is supported to help students overcome some difficulties in writing Moreover, learners should spend more time on practicing reading so that they can gain their knowledge and write effectively 25 CHAPTER CONCLUSION, LIMITATIONS AND ECOMMENDATIONS This chapter includes conclusion, limitations and some recommendations for further researcher 5.1 Conclusion Nowadays, English is a language that many people in the world use to communicative to each other, so leaming English becomes important for students [n fact, to learn English effectively, students should learn not only speaking and listening but also writing and reading For the English majored sophomores at Tay Do University, they believed that extensive reading had benefits in acquiring the target language In addition, integrating reading and writing helped them develop and improve writing skill This result of the study proved that the participants in group I (read regularly) had writing mark higher than those in group (read inegularly) It indicated that extensive reading had positive effects on sophomores' writing skill Moreover, the participants in group I had positive attitude towards extensive reading In general, investigating the importance of reading and writing skill was a useful way to help students have more positive attitude in leaming English From these mentioned problems in writing, the study hoped that they had to make a lot of effort to overcome these obstacles 5.2 Limitations Although some interesting findings were obtained in the present study, there were still some limitations The frst obstacle was the participants The participants in this study were limited Actually, there were 32 students in English 8c; however, only 30 students took part in the questionnaire because students were absent ln addition, the researcher had to go their class many times to collect information from questionnaire At first, the researcher received 25 papers and papers retumed after 26 weeks Secondly, time is also a limitation in this study It cost much time to analyze the data from questionnaire because some of the students did not focus on fulfilling the questionnaire Then, the researcher ought to wait for weeks to deliver interview The last barrier of this study was the instruments The research just focused on questionnaire, interview and the comparative study instead of pretest and post-test Therefore, it was difficult to show complete effects of extensive reading through extensive reading 5.3 Recommendations This research can be seen as a basis for further research in the future Based on the results of this study, other research can be carried out to further explore the effects of extensive reading on writing skill by many other ways such as encouraging students read more regularly in their free time, helping them realize the relationship between reading and \a,riting so that they can understand the important role of extensive reading Moreover, other research should go into the details large participants consisting of English majored students 27 of students and non-English major REFERENCES References from books: Alderson, J.C (2000) lss essingReading Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Alshamrani, M (2003) The Attitude and Beliefs of ESL Students about Extensive Reading of Authentic Iexls Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation Indiana University ofPennsylvania Brooks, H (1988) Explore the World through Reading and Writing Language tuts,65(3), 245-253 Camiciottoli, B.C (2001) Extensive Reading in English: Habits and Attitudes of a Group of Italian University EFL Students Journai of Research in Reading,24 (2), 135- 153 Grabe, W (2003) Reading & Research and Practice In K Barbara @ds), Exploring the Dynamics of Writing Relations: Second Langmge Perspectives on Second Language Writing Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Hafiz, F M., & Tudor, I (1989) Extensive Reading and the Detelopments of Language Skills ELT Joumal, 43(l),4-13 Hafrz, F., & Tudor, I (1990) Extensive Reading and the Developments Langnge Skills English Language Teaching Journal, Hayashi, K ), 4- I I (1999) Reading Strategies and Extensive Reading in EFL Classes RELC Joumal, Le, D.Q 43 ( I of 30 Q0ll) (2), I | -132 The Impacts of fu,tensive Reading on Grade I I Students' Reading Habits.Unprfulished M.A thesis Can Tho University Lee, S Y., & Hsu, Y Y (2009) Determining the Crucial Characteristics of Extensiye Reading Programs: The Impacts of Extensive Reading on The Intemational Joumal of Foreign Language Teaching, vll 5(l), 12-20 EFL Writing Mason, 8., & Krashen, S (1997b) Langrnge Sys t em, 25 (2), 9I- tExtensive Reading in English as a Foreign 102 Matsuda, P K (2003b) Second Language Writing in the 2dh Century A Historical Perspective.In B Kroll (8d,.), Exploring the Dyndnics of Second Language Writing ( 15 -34) Cambridge : Cambridge University Press Parodi, & Giovani (2007) Reading-Writing Connection Discourse Oriented Research Reading and Writing, 20(3), 225-250 Pigada, M., & Schemitt, N (2006) Vocabulary Acquisition Reading A Case Study Reading in a Foreign Langtnge, from Extensive l8(l), l-28 Quach, N.A (2007) The Effects of an Extensiye Reading Program on Students' Reading ProJiciency in a Vietnamese Context: An Experimental Study Ha Noi University of Languages and Intemational Studies, Vietnamese National University: Ha Noi Shelton, S (2006) Encouraging Extensive Reading TESL JoumeJ Onlne, 12(4), l-3 Stein, V (1990) Exploring the Cognition of Reading+o-Wrile New York: Oxford University Press Truong Thi Bich Lien (2012), The Effects of Extewive Reading on Grade 1l Students' English Writing Performance Unpublished M.A thesis Can Tho University Preferences from the internet en.Wilcipedia.org itelsi.org Connecting Reading and Writing in College EFL Courses Ohio State University (Ohio, USA) ht : //www t ot a I e s l c om https://is.municz The BeneJits of Extensive Reading in EFL at Masaryk University v11l Jacobs, G., & Gallo, P (2002) Reading Alone Together: Enhancing Extensive in Second Langnge Construction Retrieved April 26, 2012 from Reading Via Sttdent-Student Cooperation Reading Online, 5(6) www extens iv e r e ading ne t/o I ine Leung, C Y (2OOZ) Extensive Reading and Language Learning: A Diary Students of o Beginning Learner of Japanese Reading in a Foreign Language, 14(l) Retrieved Muy, 2Al2 fromwww.nllrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/april20l2/leung/leung.html Maley, A (2009) Extensive Reoding: Why h Is Goodfor Our Students andfor Us? 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Annual TESOL Convention Retrieved May 6, 2012 www exc henge s state from gov/ www.eduscience.ltu The Effects of Extensive Reading on Vocabulary Development in EFL Learners in Dendasht Language Institute ry lx APPENDICES APPENDD( QIIESTIOIINAIRE Dear students, My name is Tran Thi Tuoi and I am a senior of English major I am examining a study about "the effects of extensive reading on writing skill of English majored sophomores at Tay Do University" Please take your time to fulfill these below questions carefully because its result is important to my research Thank you very much! Student's name: Gender: Class: Age: Telephone number: Please read the following questions and circle the appropriate answer to your opinion How long have you studied English? Years Where are you from? a Countryside b Crty What you think about English? a Very important b Important c Normal d Not important x Which skill you like? a Reading b Writing c Listening d Speaking How you think about reading? a Very important b Important c Normal d Not important How often you read? a Daily b Sometimes c Seldom d Never What are materials that you often read? a Newspaper/ b Books c Comic books d Novel e Others x1 How much time you spend to read everyday? a 30 minutes b An hour c hours d hours How about writing skill? a Very necessary b Necessary c Normal d Unnecessary 10 Are reading and writing closely associated to each other? a Strongly agree b Agree c No idea d Disagree e Strongly disagree I l What you think about extensive a reading? Very useful b Usetul c No idea d Unuseful x11 12 Do you agree extensive reading is useful in develop writing skill? a Snongly agree b Agree c No idea d Disagree e Strongly disagree 13 Which ones you think they will be improved through (You can choose many answers) a Organization of ideas b Ideas of a writing topic c Vocabulary d Grammatical stuctures e Social knowledge f Writing style Thankyoavery much! xllt extensive reading? APPENDD(2 INTERVIEW Dear students, My name is Tran Thi Tuoi and I am a senior of English major I am examining a study about "the effects of extensive reading on writing skill of English majored sophomores at Tay Do University" Please take your time to fulfiU these below questions carefully because its result is important to my research Thank you very much! Student's name: Age: Gender: Telephone number: Please, read these below questions carefully and give your opinions in detail l How many hours you read everyday? How you think about extensive reading? Why? xlv What materials that you often read? In your ophion, are extensive reading and writing skill closely associated to each other? Why? According to you, is writing a difficult skill? Basing on your experience, what are the effects of extensive reading on writing skill? (Vocabulary, ideas, grammatical structures, organization ) Thank you very mach! rnuoNo olr Hoc TAY D0 THtt VIEN xv