Some difficulties of learning english directed to toeic reading of non english majored freshmen at tay do university

TAY DO UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE SOME DIFFICULTIES OF LEARNING ENGLISH DIRECTED TO TOEIC READING OF NON - ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY SUPERVISOR: STUDENT: Nguyen Hiep Thanh Nga, Ph.D Name: Lam Thi Thai Nguyen Code: 1652220201085 Class: English 11B May, 2020 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I have finished my research proposal by support of many people I am deeply indebted to many individuals who guided, helped, assited me to complete this research First and foremost, I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart to my supervisor, Mrs Nguyen Hiep Thanh Nga, Ph.D who has given me the precious comments and important instructions She spent her valuable time for reading and giving me feedback and the suggestion from the draft until the whole study was done Without her, it would be difficult for me to complete this study Next, I am grateful for the assistance of the students from Business Administration class, course XIV at Tay Do University for giving me information Finally, a deep gratitude goes to my family, especially my parents and my younger brother who always offered me deep encouragement My family is the strong motivation that helps me try my hardest to accomplish this study Moreover, I would like to thank my friends who helped me come over some problems that I faced when I wrote this research i ABSTRACT Learning English directed to TOEIC test is an important subject for students, especially students of Tay Do University Reading seems a skill that many students usually face difficulties in learning Therefore, the survey research “Some difficulties of learning English directed to TOEIC Reading of non - English majored freshmen at Tay Do University” was conducted to figure out common difficulties in studying TOEIC reading of students non majoring in English Freshmen of Bachelor of Business Administration 14B at Tay Do university were chosen as the participants There are 90 students in this class Questionnaire was used as intruments to collect the information The findings of the study would point out the learners difficulties consisting of general difficulties in grammar, vocabulary, reading skill, background knowledge and difficulties in each of parts in TOEIC Reading ii COMMENTS iii TABLES OF CONTENT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i ABSTRACT ii COMMENTS iii TABLES OF CONTENT iv CHAPTER ONE : INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 The significant of the study 1.3 The organization of the study CHAPTER TWO : LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definition : 2.1.1 Overview the TOEIC Reading 2.1.2 The term of reading 2.2 The importance of reading 2.3 The general difficulties of TOEIC Reading 2.3.1 Grammar 2.3.2 Vocabulary 2.3.3 Reading skill 2.3.4 Background knowledge 2.4 Difficulties in each part of TOEIC Reading CHAPTER THREE : RESEARCH AIMS - REASEARCH QUESTION HYPOTHESIS 3.1 Research aims 3.2 Research question 3.3 Hypothesis CHAPTER FOUR : RESEARCH METHOD 4.1 Research design .9 4.2 Participants iv 4.3 Instruments 4.4 Procedure CHAPTER FIVE : EXPECTED OUTCOME 11 5.1 Grammar 11 5.2 Vocabulary 11 5.3 Reading skill 11 5.4 Background knowledge 11 REFERENCES 12 QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS 15 v CHAPTER : INTRODUCTION In this chapter, I state the rationale, the significance of the study and research organization 1.1 Rationale In the period of international integration, we can not deny that English has an important role in the fields of international economy, culture, education, politics and science This is a common language in many regions and territories around the world In fact, English language proficiency is always one of the prerequisites for any student, student planning to study abroad and for those who apply for jobs at institutions domestic and foreign officials Integrating into the general trend of the world, Vietnamese people in general and Vietnamese young people in particular recognize the importance of English delivered in developing their own career or the whole country The quality of human resources is always one of the top priorities and is an important factor in the success of all units, organizations, companies or corporations worldwide Especially, before the trend of international economic integration, human resources capable of using foreign languages to work, negotiate and cooperate with foreign partners are extremely necessary In order to meet the development trend of the country with the goal of building a high quality human resource, most universities in Vietnam have now introduced foreign languages, especially English education program At Tay Do University, English directed to TOEIC is a compulsory subject It consists of two sections : Listening skills and Reading skills Generally, reading skill is the most difficult for students Some problems about vocabulary, grammar, reading skill confuse them From some above reasons, this study has been conducted to find out the difficulties in the learning TOEIC Reading of the freshmen at Tay Do University 1.2 The significance of the study This study shows the difficulties that freshmen at Tay Do University face in the reading part of the TOEIC By doing this research, the researcher wants to help students at Tay Do University find out the problems and overcome them in order to improve their reading scores 1.3 The organization of the research This research is divided into five main chapters Chapter : Introduction provides the rationale, significance and organization of the study Chapter : Literature review covers the theory of reading, consisting of definitions of reading, the importance of reading, some obtacles that students get in trouble in studying TOEIC Reading skill Chapter : Research aims - Research question - Hypothesis Chapter : Research method states the study method employed in the research including research questions, research design, participants, instruments and procedure Chapter : Expected outcome gives the expected outcome for the research proposal CHAPTER : LITERATURE REVIEW This part consists of overview about TOEIC Reading, the term of reading, the importance of reading, the general difficulties of TOEIC Reading and difficulties in each part of TOEIC Reading 2.1 Definition 2.1.1 Overview about TOEIC reading In TOEIC reading section, there are 100 multiple-choice questions which take 75 minutes Reading score scale ranges from to 495 (Examinee handbook - TOEIC Listening& Reading, 2019, p.1) TOEIC Reading test is divided into three parts including incomplete sentences, incomplete text and reading comprehension Part - Incomplete Sentences has 40 sentences to test learners grammar and vocabulary in which test-takers are asked to select the best answer to complete the sentence, then mark the letter (A), (B), (C), or (D) on their answer sheet Part - Incomplete text consists of 12 questions in which there are texts and questions for each text In this part, test-takers are asked to select the best answer to complete the text Part 7Reading Comprehension includes 48 questions Test takers will read about advertisement, form, letter, e-mail, fax, memo, chart, instruction, or notice separately At Tat Do University, non - English majored freshmen study on " Very easy TOEIC" They have the number of questions of each part : part (15 questions), part (6 questions), part (9 questions) 2.1.2 The term of reading According to Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (Jack & Richard, 1985), reading can be defined as the process of perceiving a written text in order to understand its contents which can be done silently, and the understanding that result is called reading comprehension Reading is defined as a cognitive process that involves decoding symbols to arrive at meaning Reading is an active process of constructing meanings of words Reading with a purpose helps the reader to direct information towards a goal and focuses their attention Although the reasons for reading may vary, the primary purpose of reading is to understand the text Reading is a thinking process It allows the reader to use what he or she may already know, also called prior knowledge During this processing of information, the reader uses strategies to understand what they are reading, uses themes to organize ideas, and uses textual clues to find the meanings of new words Reading is the complex cognitive process of decoding symbols to derive meaning It is a form of language processing Success in this process is measured as reading comprehension Reading is a means for language acquisition, communication, and sharing information and ideas Readers may use context clues to identify the meaning of unknown words Reading skill includes some skill such as : skim, scanning, intensive reading and extensive reading According to Reading for Understanding (Catherine, 2002), reading comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and constructingmeaning through interaction and involvement with written language which entails elements: the reader who doing the comprehending (bring his own capacities, abilities, knowledge and experiences), the text to be comprehended and the activity (the purposes, the processes, the consequences) The dynamic interaction between these elements of reading comprehension can be depicted in the following figure 2.2 The important of reading "The more you read the more things you know" ( Dr Seuss, 1978), reading is important because of some reasons: It helps you to discover new things by enabling you to educate yourself in any area of life you are interested in and to your own research and thinking Reading helps to develop the mind and imagination and the creative side of a person It helps to improve (vocabulary and spelling) communication both written and spoken Reading plays an important part in building a good self-image It is a function that is necessary in today’s society 2.3 The general difficulties of TOEIC reading 2.3.1 Grammar "Grammar, which knows how to control even kings"( Moliere, 1622) English grammar is very complex, difficult to remember, difficult to learn and especially difficult to use and flexibly apply to each context appropriately English grammar has lots of rules, not to mention countless items outside of that rule Grammar is very important, using the wrong grammar can be confusing and changing the meaning of what you are communicating So many learners are always obsessed with this part and take a lot of time to study Moreover, there are singular and plural forms that the students have to distinguish and still many forms that have to be learned Most students are very easy to get confused with English grammar, while grammar is very needed to form a right sentence If the students not have grammar mastery, of course they will not be able to produce sentences that grammatically right Students at Tay Do university study " Very easy TOEIC" TOEIC consists of units : present tense, past tense, gerunds/infinitives, subjectverb agreement, auxiliaries and relative pronoun Every unit has each difficult The most difficult grammar in this TOEIC is tenses In short, how much you know about tense how many scores you have Learning grammar is like learning to drive, you can learn all the rules and regulations, but you will not be good unless you practice 2.3.2 Vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language Wilkins (1972) once said, "Without grammar, very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed." English is one of the languages with the most vocabulary in the world An extensive vocabulary aids expression and communication.Vocabulary size has been directly linked to reading comprehension Linguistic vocabulary is synonymous with thinking vocabulary And the reason is lack of vocabulary English, has thousands and thousands of words In many cases, even those native speakers of the language not know all the words of that language There are too many to learn Another problem students face in learning English vocabulary is that they learn new words, but they tend to forget what they have learned quite soon after the just learned them.The teacher has an essential role in helping students to improve their vocabulary Unluckily, vocabulary teaching has not been enough to respond to such problem, and teachers have not recognized the tremendous importance of helping their students to develop an extensive vocabulary Many students have problems in vocabulary because of some reasons: they only concentrate in listening or speaking, many words have more than one meaning and some meaning are not common use so students can get confused Moreover, rote learning on word make them forget quickly For example ( Very easy TOEIC, p.29): Will you (borrow/ lend) me a pen ? He has (an) (appointment/ promise) this afternoon The students can not choose the correct answer if they not know the meaning of word By the way, in case they forget the meaning of word, they can guest word's meaning base on the background 2.3.3 Reading skills Reading is an interaction between reader and text (Rumelhart, 1997) Reading is not simply a cognitive skill, nor does it have a straightforward outcome as the same text can be understood in different ways by different readers Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and to integrate with what the reader already knows Fundamental skills required in efficient reading comprehension are knowing meaning of words, ability to understand meaning of a word from discourse context, ability to follow organization of passage and to identify antecedents and references in it, ability to draw inferences from a passage about its contents, ability to identify the main thought of a passage, ability to answer questions answered in a passage, ability to recognize the literary devices or propositional structures used in a passage and determine its tone, to understand the situational mood (agents, objects, temporal and spatial reference points, casual and intentional inflections, etc.) conveyed for assertions, questioning, commanding, refraining etc and finally ability to determine writer's purpose, intent and point of view, and draw inferences about the writer (discourse-semantics) Ability to comprehend text is influenced by readers' skills and their ability to process information If word recognition is difficult, students use too much of their processing capacity to read individual words, which interferes with their ability to comprehend what is read There are many reading strategies to improve reading comprehension and inferences, including improving one's vocabulary, critical text analysis (intertextuality, actual events vs narration of events, etc.) and practicing deep reading There are different styles of reading for different contexts : Skimming is used to rapidly identify the main ideas of a text; Scanning is a technique often used to find a word in a book, a number in a telephone dictionary or to seek key words or ideas 2.3.4 Background knowledge Background knowledge is an extensive term to describe different kinds of knowledge Background knowledge plays a key role in students' reading comprehension If students not have sufficient related knowledge, they will probably have difficulties understanding text According to Research on Human Capital in Education of ETS's center ( Education Testing Service), a student scores below the knowledge threshold, they will probably have trouble comprehending the text Lack of background knowledge is one of your obstacles in reading Culture can be explained as what the society thinks and does, and the language is the expression off the ideas of the society For this reason, students need to have knowledge of business Therefore, in order to improve reading level of a language, having a command of its reading skill and vocabulary is far from not enough, one must have profound knowledge of its culture as well This may imply that most learners have limited knowledge of their ways of dealing with reading input and little awareness of the actual problems occurring during their online processing To sum up, background knowledge mentions all what learners have known, which may strongly affect the way in which the readers interpret and understanding the message when reading If they not have variety knowledge in many fields, they cannot apply their knowledge to the reading text Accordingly, unless they have a good background knowledge, they will not be successful compression in reading 2.4 Difficulties in each part of TOEIC reading Part - Incomplete sentences There are 15 questions in this part Most of the content in this section are tenses and grammar structures Because freshmen have not opportunity to use words regularly so they can not be sure about the correct answer In addition, the students not clear about grammar structures and grasp how to sort type of words So they can make mistakes in this part easily Part - Incomplete texts Students read a sentence that has a single word or several words replaced with a gap, followed by four answer choices.This part consists of questions and it focuses primarily on the student’s range of vocabulary and grammar If they not have a good background knowledge, they will be easy to confuse with this part Beside, the students have to guest the meaning of word or idea of author Because there is some unfamiliar topic that makes them confused Part 7- Reading comprehension They are so tired by the time they reach the final reading section (9 questions in part 7) of the TOEIC that they can not concentrate and get almost no marks in this section Apart from making sure you leave no blanks and therefore guess whatever questions students had no time to in the last couple of minutes of the test They always run out of time during the last section of the TOEIC Reading paper.This is a common problem As they use so much time in two part before Unluckily, this last part needs more time for reading learly to find the information Additionally, there are different styles of reading for different contexts, they cannot seek for appropriate kind CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH AIMS - RESEARCH QUESTION HYPOTHESIS Research aims The purpose of this study is to explore the difficulties of studying TOEIC Reading Thence, the researcher provides difficulties of TOEIC Reading for the non-English majored students in freshmen Research question This study is expected to find difficulties on TOEIC Reading of non - English majored freshmen in Tay Do University This study was undertaken with the purposes of dealing with the research question : What difficulties non - English majored freshmen at Tay Do University often face in studying TOEIC Reading ? Hypothesis Some factors affecting TOEIC Reading could be lacking of grammar, vocabulary, background knowledge and reading skill According to the literature and the research question, it was hypothesized that the TOEIC reading ability of non English majored freshmen would be find out difficulties CHAPTER : RESEARCH METHOLOGY In this chapter, I presente research methology including: design, participants, instrument and procedure 4.1 Research design This study is performed to investigate on " Some dificulties of learning English directed to TOEIC Reading of non - majored freshmen at Tay Do University" The reliability and validity of research results are based on the instruments The information from the participants are collected through a questionnaire The participants are 90 students of Business Administration class 14B in Tay Do University 4.2 Participants Participants in this study are 90 freshmen of Business Administration class 14B in Tay Do University They are both male and female Their ages range from 18 to 20 They all speak Vietnamese as their first language and English is considered as their second language They study English directed to TOEIC test with Very easy TOEIC (2007, second edition) by Anne Taylor and Garrett Byrne They study units in this book ( from unit to unit 6): present tense, past tense, gerunds/infinitives, subjectverb agreement, auxiliaries and relative pronoun There are 60 periods for TOEIC 1( about 25 periods for Reading skills) 4.3 Instruments Questionnaire is used as instrument in this study This questionnaire embraces questions and 10 statements For the first questions, students are required to choose the appreciate answer Statement to 18 are featured the - degree Likert type scale including strongly agree, agree, no idea, disagree and strongly disagree 4.4 Procedure The research lasted about 12 weeks and it is was divided into steps All the activities of conducting the study is listed in the following table: Duration (12 weeks) Activities in study process Step : from the 1st week to 2nd week -Researching materials to support for the research -Designing questionnaire 10 Step : from the 3th week to 4th week - Writing the outline - Recheck questionnaire Step : from the 5th week to 10th week - Writing the literature review - Writing abstract and acknowledgement Step : from the 11th week to 12th week - Checking all of the research - Completing the research 11 CHAPTER : EXPECTED OUTCOME 5.1 Grammar The first problem is grammar They not remember all grammar structures Most students are very easy to get confused with English grammar Because they have not opportunity to use words regularly so they can not be sure about the correct answer In addition, the students not clear about grammar structures and grasp how to sort type of words So they can make mistakes in this part easily This study can help the students find solutions to improve grammar and apply it better 5.2 Vocabulary Vocabulary is one of most important things for speaking English All of students not have enough vocabulary to know the content of passage or know a little because of lacking knowledge of the cultural background Beside, they must study vocabulary for examination so that they missed words after testing Sometimes, they confuse while meeting unfamiliar topic Through this study, students might learn vocabulary and improve their vocabulary 5.3 Reading skill They have difficulty understanding text Moreover, the students have difficulty in integrating information in a text and in making inferences They confuse to find out the main idea and main information of the passages There are different styles of reading for different contexts, so they not seek a appreciate kind that makes them lost much time for reading This research can help the students recognize how to choose the appreciate reading skill for each passge 5.4 Background knowledge A lack of background knowledge can hinder reading comprehension They will probably have trouble comprehending the text Some students lack sufficient reading skills, including decoding words, vocabulary and reading skill Through this research students can find some solutions to help them practice more and more to have good background knowledge 12 REFERENCES Anne,T & Garrett,B Very easy TOEIC (2007), Compass Publishing Catherine S.C., Reading for understanding (2002), RAND Dr Seuss, I can read with my eyes shut (1978), Near Fine Examinee handbook - TOEIC Listening & Reading (2019), p1 Jack,C.R., & Richard,W.S.( 2013) Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics Moliere (1622) Second language teaching and learning Boston: Heinle and Heinle Publishers Wilkins (1972) Vocabulary and Its Importance in Language Learning Wikipedia retrieved from : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOEIC 13 QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS Dear friends, My name is Lam Thi Thai Nguyen and I am a currently senior of English major I would like to give my thanks to you for spending your precious time helping me with this interview questions This interview is one of the instruments used to collect important information for my research about “ Some difficulties of learning English directed to TOEIC Reading comprehension of non – English majored freshmen at Tay Do University” Thus, please take your time to fulfill these below questions carefully because your answer is really significant and helpful to my research Students’ name: Gender: _ Class: Age: _ Please read the following question and circle the appropriate answer for each question Give specific answers if needed How long have you studied English ? years Choose one answer about your TOEIC reading : a Very good b Good c Average d Bad Which parts of TOEIC Reading you think the most difficult ? a Part ( incomplete sentences) b Part ( incomplete texts ) c Part ( reading comprehension) What is the most factor that affects TOEIC reading ? 14 a Grammar b Vocabulary c Reading skill d.Background knowledge 5.What difficulties you meet about grammar reading comprehension? a.Not having opportunity to use words regularly b Not clear about grammar structures c Not grasp how to sort type of words 6.What are your difficulties related to vocabulary when learning TOEIC reading ? a Lacking knowledge of the cultural background b Feeling confused with unfamiliar topic c Lacking specialized terminology 7.What reading skill factors you face in studying TOEIC reading comprehension ? a Skim b Scan c Guessing ideas This table is about the positive effects of speaking skill Please read the following statement and mark () in suitable column to express your opinion Statements Strongly Disagree You don't remember when you add "-es" to verbs that end in what letter You forgot which are irregular verbs and add '-ed' 10 There are too many words for you remember that followed by Gerunds or Infinitives 15 Disagree No idea Agree Strongly Agree 11.There are too many rules of subject-verb agreement that make you confused 12 You are not sure when you borrow auxiliaries or not 13 There are many new words about business that you not known the meaning 14 Matching pairs of words make it harder for you to choose the answer 15 You not use a suitable reading skill for each passage 16.You forget the kind of word ( it is noun, verb or adj) 17 Your reading skills are not good to find out the correct information 18 You are not enough time for reading information clearly 16