1485 effects of schema based activities on efl learners reading comprehension ảnh hưởng của các hoạt động hoạt hóa kiến thức nền đối với khả năng đọc hiể

Rationale

Thefieldofsecondandforeignlanguagereadinghasbeenrevitalizedinthepastfe wyearssinceourunderstandingofthenatureofthereadingprocess.According to Carrel (1988, p 1), for many students, reading is by far the mostimportant skill of the four in L2, especially in ESL or EFL Students needreading comprehension to successfully accomplish the educational goals andexpectations,whicharerequiredintheclassroomsettings.Furthermore,readin ghasagreatfunctioninopeningupthehorizonofknowledgeaswellasvocabulary used every day, which can contribute to other aspects of learninglanguages.

Mikulecky and Jeffries (1996, p 14) state that comprehension is part ofourlives,itmakessenseofarrivingnewinformationandconnectingtheseideastowhat he/shealreadyknows.Sincereadingisaprocesswhichhappensamongreaders’ existing knowledge and ability to understand working information, itbecomesimportanttomakelearnersreadyprecedingthereadingtasks.Therefore, an effective method that has been introduced to activate students’knowledge during pre-reading stage is using schema-based activities Thetheory claims that people need to combine their own background knowledgewithnewinformationinatexttocomprehendit(Adams&Collins,1977,p.4).Si nce this process involves individual experience, it succeeds in attractingstudentsinreadingandthusbenefitstheminmotivatingtheirinterests,increas ingtheirreadingspeed,and makingproperreadingjudgments.

With the context of integration and globalization in Vietnam, trainingandimprovingEnglishproficiencyseemstobeatoppriority.However,Englis hlanguageteachinginVietnamhasnotyetachievedimpressivesuccessas our desire due to several troublesome challenges One of these problems isstudents’abilityinreadingcomprehension.Infact,readingmaterialscontaining various of vocabulary and unfamiliar topics that can make studentsconfused and demotivated as they are unable to understand (Ha, 2021) Inaddition, many teachers may ignore the impact of their learners’ backgroundanditsroleincomprehension.Asaresult,moststudentsarenotawareofwh atthey are going to read about, what they are going to do with the tasks, and soon.

Theproblemisthatfewstudieshavebeenconductedonthefieldofusingschema- basedactivitiesforlanguageteachingandlearningreadingcomprehensioninVietna m.Consequently,tofillthisliteraturegap,thispresentstudy aims to shed light on the implication of schema- based activitiesinteachingreadingcomprehensionanditseffectsonEFLlearners.Thestudyalsofindso utthestudents’perceptionsofusingschema-basedactivitiesinlearningreading comprehension.

Aimandobjectivesofthestudy

Researchquestions

1 To whatextentdoestheuseofschema- basedactivitiesaffectEFLlearners’achievement inreading comprehension?

Significanceofthe study

Althoughthereareseveralstudiesabouttheschemaactivationinlanguage teaching that have been proved, few are conducted in Vietnam,especiallyinKhanhHoaProvince.Thus,itisessentialtoconductthisresearch becauseofthe followingreasons.

Theoretically, the findings of the study may provide a basis for futureresearchersbasedontheuseofschematheory.Itcanalsohelpteacherstohaveaclea rerunderstandingofthenatureandeffectsofschemaonstudents’readingcomprehension.

Practically,basedontheresults,teachersprobablymakedecisionsaboutusingthes chema-basedactivitiesinteachingratherthanthetraditionalbottom-up activities to engage their learners in Moreover, learners may incorporatemore of these schema-based activities into their self- study habits Finally, ifthere is a connection between students’ reading comprehension and schemas,materialsdeveloperscanincludemoreschema- basedactivitiesintheircourse bookstoencourageteachersandstudentstopaymoreattentiontosuchactivities.

Scopeofthe study

Duetothelimitedtime,abilityandresearchconditions,thescopeofthisstudy is confined in a population of 80 grade 10 th students from two intactclasses at a language center inKhanh Hoa Province Therefore, the study’sgeneralization would be limited,and the results may not be representative of alargersameofallEFL studentsinKhanhHoaProvince.

Definitions ofterms

- readingcomprehension:readingcomprehensioncanbebrieflyas“theprocessofmakingm eaning from text”(Wolley,2011,p.15).

- schema(plural:schemasorschemata):“schemareferstoanactiveorganization of past reactions, or of past experiences, which must always besupposedtobeoperatinginanywell-adaptedorganicresponse”(Barlett,1932,p.201).

- schema theory: “The ‘schemata’ based learning theory indicates that readersprocessmeaningwhichhasbeenpresentedthroughprintbyusingpriorknow ledge of the world to produce representations of anticipated meaning”(Hudson,1982,p.1).

- schema-based activities: additional patterning activities that are needed toactivatestoredinformationandbuildnewconnectionstosuccessfullyconsolidat enew andpriorknowledge(Kennedy &Ebner,1996,p.38).

Structureof the thesis

The thesis is presented in five chapters: Introduction, LiteratureReview,ResearchMethodology,FindingsandDiscussion,ConclusionandImplications.

Chapter 1, Introduction , presents the rationale, aimand objectives,research questions, significance, scope, definitions of terms, and the structureofthethesis.

Chapter 2, Literature Review , explores several underlying theoreticalconstructsthatframedthisstudy.Italsoexaminestherelevantliteraturer egarding1)EFLreadingcomprehension,2)theuseofschema-basedactivitiesin reading comprehension, and3) related studies on the use of schema-basedactivities in languagelearning.

Chapter3, ResearchMethodology ,explainstheresearchmethod.Firstly,it presents the research questions and the hypotheses of the present study.Secondly,itdescribestheresearchdesignandparticipants.Thirdly,itintroduces the research instruments used to collect data and the materials usedfor the intervention in detail Lastly, this chapter comes to an end with theprocedureto conductthestudy and the methods ofdataanalysis.

Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion , reports the results of the study.Firstofall,thereliabilityoftheinstrumentsisintroduced.Afterward,thescoreof learners’ reading comprehension between the experimental group and thecontrolgrouparecompared.Then,theinformationcollectedfromthequestionnai reareanalyzed.Finally,thedataof6theface-to-facesemi-structured interviews are analyzed in order to give more explanations for thefindingsofthestudy.Itisdonealongwithcomparisonwithpreviousresearch.

Chapter 5, Conclusion and Implications , makes a conclusion of thereportofthestudy.First,itsummarizesthemainfindings.Then,itsuggeststheresearch implications Finally, the limitations of the study and the suggestionsforfuture researcharethe lastpart ofthischapter.

Thischapterreviewstheliteratureknowledgerelatedtoreadingcomprehen sion,schema-basedactivitiesandpreviousstudiesonusingschema-based activitiestoteachEnglishskills.

Reading comprehension

Definitions

To begin with, discussing on the reading concept, a large number ofresearchershaveoffereddifferentdefinitions.Readingisacomplexinteractionof cognitive process and strategies used by the readers with different types ofinformation in the reading text (Dole et al., 1991, p 241; Hedgcock & Ferris,2018, p 61) Similarly, Benati (2020, p.

236) claims that “reading consideredaninteractiveprocessbetweenthereaderandthetext.Thetextpresentsletters, words,sentences,andparagraphsthatencodemeaning.Thereaderusesknowledge,sk ills,andstrategiestodeterminewhatthatmeaningis”.Inaddition,Nuttall(1996,p.2) addsreadingisaprocesswhichinvolvesdecodingwords andidentifyingmeaning of atextfunctionally.

Comprehension what is being read is more than just recognizing anddecodingwords,thisprocessmeansreadersareabletomakesenseofwhattheyare reading and connect these information in the text with what they havealreadyknown(Mikulecky&Jeffries,2007,p.74).So,readingcomprehensionis considered as the primary purpose for reading (Grabe, 2002, p 277) It canbesimplyunderstoodas‘readingandunderstanding’.

Regardingreadingcomprehension,therearenumerousdefinitionspropose d by different scholars.Ahmadi et al (2013, p 238) refer readingcomprehensiona s t h e a b i l i t y o f r e a d e r s t o u n d e r s t a n d b o t h t h e s u r f a c e a n d hidden meanings of the text by using meta-cognitive reading strategies. Morespecifically, reading comprehension can be seen as the reader’s ability to useandapplysuitableskillsaswellasstrategiestocomprehendatextsuccessfully(Benati,

2020, p 236) He also mentions that to comprehend a written text,readers must recognize and construct the meaning of the words Sharing thesame idea as Benati, Kennedy & Ebner

(1996, pp 127–128) and Macceca(2014, p 5) believes that reading comprehension refers to understanding whatis read, so readers must predict or think ahead; they do not just identify words,butmustbeabletocognitivelyprocessthewordsbygettingmeaningfromtheirbackgroun dknowledgeandpriorexperience.Thegoal,thus,istogainageneralunderstandingofwhatis mentionedinthetextratherthantorecognizemeaningfromisolatedwordsor sentences.

From all definitions above, in my view, it can be concluded that readingcannotbeunderstoodasasimpleactivityofdecodinglettersandwords.Instead,readi ng comprehension is a meaning construction activity which requires agood interaction between the reader and the text To do this, readers shouldhave basic knowledge like vocabulary,grammar, skills as well as backgroundinformation.

Readingcomprehensionapproaches

Developinglearners’readingcomprehensionistheprocessofconstructing meaning from a written text It involves making use of learners’prior knowledge as well as thinking and reasoning In the development ofreading skills, Alderson (2000, p 16), Benati (2020, p 236) and Camp

&Richard(1992,p.87)pointouttwoprocessingapproachesthataffecttheabilityofreadi ng comprehension: bottom-up andtop-down approaches.

In bottom-up approach (traditional view), reading is considered as apassive (Alderson, 2000, pp 16–17; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983, p 557) orsimply a process of decoding the linguistics information (e.g., orthographicknowledge, lexical and syntactic knowledge) from the small to large units in atext.Concernedthisapproach,Cambourne(1979),whousestheterm‘outside-in’ instead of bottom-up, believes that the reader processes each word as it isencountered,then theprocessofthisapproachworksispresentedasfollow:

PrintEvery letterdiscriminatedPhonemes & graphemes m a t c h e d BlendingPronunciationMeaning

In contrast, in top-down approach (cognitive view), reading is believedas an active process (Dole et al., 1991; Rumelhart, 1980, p 242) in whichlearnersprocessbeyondtheanalysisoflinguisticsinformation(e.g.,knowledgeof textstructure)andbackgroundknowledge(e.g.,topics’familiarity)tounderstand the text.

A typical statement of this can be found in Schank (1978,p.94).

“Wewouldclaimthatinnaturallanguageunderstandingasimpleruleisfollowed.Analysisprocee dsinatop-downpredictivemanner.Understandingisexpectationbased It is only when the expectations are useless or wrong that bottom-upprocessingbegins.”

Cambourne (1979) also provides the schematization of this approachwhich shows thereconstructionofmeaning ratherthandecoding form:

Past experience, language intuitions and expectationsSelective aspects ofprintMeaningSound,pronunciationif necessary

Nuttall(1996,pp.16–17)comparestop-downapproachtoaneagle’seyeview of the landscape, and the reader is like this eagle That means the eaglecanseeawideareaspreadoutfromagreatheight,thenitcanunderstandand observe general patterns and the relationships between many parts on theground While she views bottom-up processing as ‘tunnel vision’, she alsogivesaspecificimageofbottom-upprocessingwhichmightbeascientistusinga magnifying glass to examine the ecology of a transect – a tiny part of thelandscapethe eagle surveys.

Both top-down and bottom-up processing are “complementary ways ofprocessing a text” (Nuttall, 1996, p 16) Both of them are used whenever weread, sometimes one dominates, and sometimes the other, but both are needed(Nunan,1991,p.63;Nuttall,1996,p.16).However,bothapproachesstillhavetheiro wnshortcomings.“Onereasonforthesurvivalofbottom-upapproachinthe face of criticism is that it seems a reasonable and logical explanation ofwhathappenswhenweread”andtop- downmodelmaynotbeusedto“distinguishadequatelybetweenbeginningreadersand fluentreaders”(Nunan,1991,pp.64–66).

Nuttall (1996, p 17) offers a combination of bottom-up and top- downapproachwhichiscalled‘interactiveapproach’(metacognitiveview)or‘bala nced approach’ (Birch, 2007, p 4) to deal with the shortcomings in twoabovemodels.Inthisapproach,readingisaninteractiveactandreadersarenotpassive participants in the reading process The reading process now adopts atop-down approach to predict the possible meaning, then move to the bottom- upapproachtocheckifthepredictionfixesthewriter’spurpose(Nuttall,1996, p 17) As a result, the difficult levels of a text depend on the linguisticinformation andthereaders’backgroundknowledge.

All in all, there are three reading comprehension approaches suggestedbydifferentscholars:bottom-up,top-downandinteractiveapproaches.Among them,interactiveapproachisconsideredasthe mosteffectiveprocessin gofwritten text(Carrell&Eisterhold,1983;Rumelhart,1980).

Readingcomprehensionteachingand learning

Goodman (1967, pp 131–132) believes that reading can be consideredasa‘psychologisticguessinggame’whichrequiresreaderstoguessandpredic tbefore reading and activate their background knowledge, then confirm theirguesses, and reconstruct the meaning As a result of such a view of reading,learners are taught to become active readers (Juan & Flor, 2006, p 264), thatis,predictingandguessingthetextmeaningbyusingtheirlanguageknowledgeandbackgr oundknowledge.Similarly,“teacherswhomodelreadingskillsandstrategies, facilitate student performances of these abilities in comprehendingtextsandprovidestudentswithmanyopportunitiesforpracticeareencouraged in a number of comprehension-enhancing approaches – the best known ofwhich are reciprocal teaching, cooperative learning and reading recovery”(Grabe,2002,p.277).

Grabe (1991, p 396) derives a general set of guidelines for readingteaching:

4 Readinglessonsshouldfocusonbackgroundknowledgethrough3 stages:pre-,during-,andpost-readingtasks.

Moreover, he also reviews research on fluent academic reading in termsofsixcomponentabilitiesandtypesofknowledgethatlearnersshouldh ave:

(1) automatic recognition ability (automatic word perception and recognitionofsyntacticstructures),

(2)vocabularyandstructuralknowledge(largerecognition of vocabulary and grammatical structure), (3) formal discoursestructureknowledge(theorganizationofthetext),(4)content/worldbackgr oundknowledge(priorculturalknowledgeandmoretext-relatedinformation), (5) synthesis and evaluation processes/strategies (evaluation andcomparison of information in texts with other knowledge), (6) metacognitiveknowledge(knowledgeoflanguageandstrategies)andcomprehensionm onitoring(recognizingproblemsintheprocessofinterpretinginformationinthetext).

Caldwell (2011, p 8) and Macceca (2014, p 25) have established goodreaderbehaviors:

• make inferences and decisions about their reading process like whattoreadcarefully,whattoreadquickly,whattoskim,whatnottoread,and whattoreread

• noticethetexttype,structure,theauthors’beliefs,intentions,etc.

Theimportance ofEnglishlanguagereading

Reading is one of important ways to improve general English languageskills.HerearesomebenefitsaccordingtoMikuleckyandJeffries(1996,p.1):

 Reading is a good way to find out new ideas, facts, experiences andknowledge.

Muriel(2012,p.164)assertstheimportanceofreadinginthedevelopment ofL2 academic competence, and “it is important as well forinterpersonalfunctionsandformerely“gettingalong”inanyliteratesociety”.

Reading is a way for learners to get exposed to associated literature and otheraspects of the L2 culture, to communicate in English – a worldwide language,toreceiveinputrelatedtotechnologicaldevelopments,worldnews,andsc ientificdiscoveries.

Richards & Renandya (2002, p 273) provide three reasons why readingreceives a special focus First, reading can be one of the most important goalsfor many foreign language students due to their pleasure,their career, theirstudy purposes Second, good reading can enhance the process of languageacquisition Finally, reading also provides good models for writing or widenlanguageareas.

Readingtestingandassessment

(2011, p 5) They are identifying good reader behaviors, identifyingareasofweakness,determiningstudentreadinglevel,anddocumentingstudentpr ogress.

She also suggests four steps to assess a student’s reading performance.First, identify what to assess To do this, we ask a question about a student’sreading.Second,collectinformationorevidencethatisappropriateforans weringourquestion.Third,analyzetheevidenceanduseittomakejudgments about the student’s strengths and needs Fourth, make a decision asaconsequenceof ouranalysis(Caldwell,2011,p.4).

Alderson(2000,p.140)providestheframeworkforreadingtestingwhichincludes five aspects of tasks: setting, test rubric, input, expected response andrelationship between input and response He also suggests characteristics forreadingtestingandassessment:

1 Reading may be tested within a content-focused battery That means,textsshouldcarrymeaningforreaders,interestthemandrelatetotheirbackgr oundknowledge.

2 Students should be tested on a range of relevant skills and strategieswith theresultsbeingprovided inaprofile-based format.

6 Teachers might keep a record of salient points which is more suitableforcontinuousassessment thanhigh-stakestestingsituations.

8 The importance of identification skills needs exploring, and meansneed finding of testing them Speed should not be measured withoutreferencetocomprehension.

9 Theresultsoftestsaffectedbyextrinsicmotivationshouldbeinterpreted. 10.Ifthereareoccasionswhenintegratedtesting(e.g.readingandwritingskill s),thepurposes fortheassessmentshouldbeclear.

11.Tests should focus on the assessment of vocabulary/ syntactic skills,discourseskills,ortheabilitytounderstandliteraloratbestconstructmeanin g fromthe writtentexts.

SchemaTheory

Definitions

Concerning Schema Theory, many scholars provides differentdefinitions.Bartlettisregardedas thefirstpersonwhousedtheterm‘schema’

(Carroll, 2008, p 47) That is, schema is an organization of any “past reactionsor experiences” in “a cultural setting” which “is stored in memory” and mustbe supposed to “be operating in any well-adapted organic response” (Barlett,1932; Birch, 2007).

In addition, Brown and Yule (1983, p 248) define schemaas “the organized background knowledge which leads us to expect or predictaspects in our interpretation of discourse” They also say that our backgroundknowledge is organized and stored in some fixed schemata, which can helppeopletomakesenseofnewthingsquickly(Brown&Yule,1983,p.250;Cook,1997, p.

86) Carrell & Eisterhold (1983, p 89) and Peregoy & Boyle (2016, p.342) believe that readers’ background knowledge largely affects languagecomprehension.Thetextdoesnotcarrymeaningitself;instead,ithelpsreaderstoret rievemeaningfromtheirownpreviouslyacquiredknowledge(An,2013).

In short, as I understand it, although there are a variety of definitions ofschema, the common idea is that they all mention about prior/ previous/ past/pre-existing/backgroundknowledgewhichmaybeactivatedandalteredbasedonth e situationto supportunderstanding.

Typesofschemas

There are two basic types of schemas that play a role in the process oflanguage understanding: formal schema and content schema Firstly, formalschema is defined as “background knowledge about the formal, rhetorical,organizationalstructuresof differentkinds of texts”, thus, it is“abstract,encoded, internalized, coherent patterns of meta-linguistic, discoursed, andtextual organization that guides expectations in our attempts to understand ameaningful piece of language” (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983, p.

560) It is theknowledge of different text genres and their structural organization such asargumentation,exposition,description,narration,stories,poemsandsoforth.

Its use is closely associated with bottom-up reading process In other words,formalschemareferstoknowledgeoflanguage,knowledgeofgenre,metali nguistic knowledge and metacognition (Alderson, 2000, pp 34–41). (1)Knowledgeoflanguageincludingstructuralknowledgeandvocabularyknowledge has long been measured to correlate with measures of readingcomprehension. Research by Laufer (1989) and Liu and Nation (1985) showsthat readers need to know 95% of the words in the text to gain completecomprehension and to be able to guess the meaning of unknown words in thetext.Eskey(2012,p.94)claimsthatwhatimportantforgoodreadersisnotjustdecoding andinterpretingthetexts,but‘speedandaccuracy’and‘automaticity’of decoding skills Therefore, successful comprehension of any written text isimpossiblewithouteffectivedecodingskills. (2)Knowledgeofgenre/texttypewhichmeansknowingtheorganizationofthetext,theplaceo finformation,thesignalofideas,thechangeofthecontentisthoughttobeimportantinfaci litatingreading.(3)Metalinguisticknowledgeandmetacognitionhavebeenproved in a study by Duffy et al (1987) It shows that bilinguals aware ofreading skills and strategies (metacognitive awareness) become more aware ofreadinglessons,andthentheirscoreonreadingachievementisbetter.Therefore, if readers do not know the language of the text, they will find itdifficult to process the text Secondly, content schema refers to “backgroundknowledge of the content area of the text” (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983, p 560)including knowledge of subject topic/matter, knowledge of the world andcultural knowledge (Alderson, 2000, pp 44–45) According to Alderson, theactivationofworldknowledgeis‘fastandautomatic’as“alllanguageprocessing requires world language” However, culture knowledge is differentasitdependsonpersonalhistoryorexperiences.Thusreadingtextsinunfam iliarculturalsettings can leadtodifficultyinunderstanding and reading texts in familiar settings can also result in misunderstanding Such knowledgereally need to be activated by the reader, or the text, if they want to use inaccurate understanding It would be clear that if one knows nothing about thetopic of the text, one will have difficulty in processing it Content schema arelargely culture-specific, it, thus, plays the most important role in decidingreaders’ understanding of the passage, since whatever kind of text written is aproduct of culture.

Widdowson(1990,p.108)categorizesschemaintotwokinds:ideationalandinte rpersonal.Accordingtohim,ideationalschemarefersto“ourknowledgeofconceptu alcontentortopic”,andinterpersonalschemaisrelatedto mode ofcommunication.

Landry(2002,p.1)dividesschemaintothreetypes:content,formal,andabstract He claims that content schemas refer to “clearly evident relationshipsobvious from a topic”, formal schemas are “distinct connections based onunderstanding of generalizations and mindset”, and abstract schemas are

In conclusion, although there are various types of schemas proposed bydifferentscholars,allofwhomarerelatedtoourlinguisticandworldknowledge.

Schema-basedactivitiesandreadingcomprehension

Theeffectsofschema-basedactivitiesonreadingcomprehension

AccordingtoAldersonandPearson(1988,pp.4–5),readingcomprehension is described as the interaction between the relating textualinformation to the reader’s existing information called schemas.Caldwell(2011,p.238)andCarrell&Eisterhold(1983,p.556)alsoclaimsthatpr eviousknowledgeprofoundlyaffectsreadingcomprehensionandourabilitytoanswer questionscorrectly.TheSchemaTheorysupportscomprehensionbycallingupstable background knowledge which has great impacts on the way we processand understand new information

282;Mikulecky&Jeffries,2007;Qanwal&Karim,2014).Similarly,Long(1989 , p 32) thinks that “comprehension is based on learners’ ability to draw on theirexistingk n o w l e d g e ” , s o s u i t a b l e s c h e m a s n e e d t o b e a c t i v a t e d t o f a c i l i t a t e efficient comprehension Carrol (2008, p 184) also justifies the role of schemainreadingcomprehension,as“whatreadersknowaffectswhattheyunderstand”(Al derson, 2000, p 33) In his opinion,schemas are considered as

“interlockingmentalstructuredrepresentingreaders’knowledge”.Whenreadersproc esswrittentext,schemasfunctionasabridgethathelpsthemintegratetheupcomingi nformationwiththeirpreviousacquiredknowledge(Perkins&Salomon, 1989) Furthermore, compare with structures and patterns which areinsomesenseinatext,schemasthereaderbringstothetextaremuchmorei mportant(Andersonetal.,1976).Theirschemas,thus,haveagreateffectonhow they digest information as well as how they store it in their memory

Morethant h a t , i t i s u s e f u l f o r r e a d e r s t o m a k e p r e d i c t i o n s ( W i d d o w s o n , 1 9 8 3 ) , inferences( P e a r so n et a l , 1 9 7 9) a n d c o m p r e h e n s i o n pr oc esse s ( B r a n t m e i e r , 2004).T h e r e f o r e , i t c a n helpreaders/ listenerstoachievea highlevelofcomprehension.

Landry(2002,p.2)addsthespecificroleofthenotion‘schema’toEFLteachers that is to help them have a better understanding of the process ofreading by EFL learners He points out the difference between a strong and aweak view of schemas The former is something that influences the reader’sopinion before reading, while the latter would be one of organized previousknowledgethat requires readers to makepredictions ofdiscourse.

Pedagogicali m p l i c a t i o n o f s c h e m a -

Benati (2020, p 240) believes that “the pedagogical implication of theSchema Theory is the understanding that reading is an interactive processbetweenreadersandtexts”.So,basedonthis,hepointsoutfourbasicstepsthatstudents needto followwhen readingto learn:

1 Identify the authentic purpose of reading Predict or anticipate contentby using prior knowledge, then think of suitable strategies for each typeofreadingtext.

2 Attend to parts of the text which are relevant to identified purposes andignore the rest, which can help students to focus on specific items andreducethe amountofinformationtheyneedto swallow.

3 Pickupsuitablestrategiesand usethemflexiblyand interactively.Interactivestrategiesshouldbe used.

Then, effective reading comprehension tasks are introduced to meet theneedoflearners,theyincludefivephases:pre-reading,reading,in- textinteraction,post-reading andpersonalization(Benati,2020,p.242).

1 Pre- readingactivitiesmustbeusedtoactivatelearners’existingknowledge.Ther earemany techniquesthatcanbeused inthis step:

 previewing is a quick kind of reading that helps readers to have ageneral look of the content and the text type (Aebersold & Field,1997,p.73;Mikulecky

 visualguidesmaybeemployedbyseveralsourcessuchastelevisionsh ows, videoclips, movies,slides,pictures,charts,figures,ortablesrelated to thetext(Dutta,1994).

 pre-questioningisalsoacommonandeffectivepre- readingactivities(Aebersold,J.A.andField,1997,p.71;Brown,2007,p. 42;Lazar,2009).Pre-readingquestionscanbestructuredquestions or unstructured questions asked by teachers (Singer,1978).

 brainstorming (Hood & Solomon, 1985, p 50) in groups or inpairs.Therearevariousbrainstormingactivitiessuchasreflectionandrec ordingconceptmap/advanceorganizer/semanticmapping/mind mappingK- W-L chartand pre-readingplan.

 predictingc o n t e n t a n d a c t i v a t i n g s t u d e n t s ’ p r i o r k n o w l e d g e through(sub)titles, headings,divisionswithin thetext sandillustrations.“Predictionisimportantbecauseitactivatesschemas:that i s , i t c a l l s i n t o m i n d a n y e x p e r i e n c e s a n d a s s o c i a t e d knowledgethatwealreadyhaveaboutthetopicofthetext;predictionals ohelpsustomakesenseofsentences”(Nuttall,1996,p.13).

 vocabularyp r e - t e a c h i n g c a n h e l p l e a r n e r s d e a l w i t h u n k n o w n wor dsduring readingcomprehensionprocess(Carrell,1988).

These are reasons why teachers should give students enough time in theclassroomf o r g r o u p p r e v i e w i n g a n d p r e d i c t i n g a c t i v i t i e s t o p r e p a r e f o r a reading comprehension task (Benati, 2020, p 238) Similar to the idea above,anotherpopularconceptproposedby(Rumelhart,1985)isthat“one’sbackgr ound knowledge plays a more important role than new words and newstructures in reading comprehension” Therefore, “in teaching reading, theteachershouldteachthebackgroundknowledgefirstsothatstudentsequippedwith such knowledge will be about to guess meaning from the printed page”(Rumelhart,1985).

2 Duringthereadingstage,studentsareaskedtoscanforspecificinformationaf terunderstandinggeneralmeaning.Atfirst,itisnecessaryfor readers to understand the general meaning of the text, then they areaskedtorapidlyscanthetext toestablishwhethertheyhaveguessedthecontent ofthetextduringpre- readingactivities.

3 In the text-interaction stage, learners explore fully the text content.Makinginferencesbyusingimaginationandknowledgeabouttheworldto fillinfactsandideasthatarenotavailableinthetextisalsoimportant.Mikulecky & Jeffries( 2 0 0 7 , p 8 8 ) c a l l i t “ r e a d i n g b e t w e e n t h e l i n e s ” Itisoftennecessarytoreadbetweenthelinesbecausewritersmayleav eout information that they think readers have known already or will beable to guess Language instructors must make sure that learners do notread word for word and understand the purpose of reading as it can helpthemtoselect appropriate strategies.

4 In the post-reading stage, learners are given tasks to check and verifycomprehensioninordertoencouragethemtolearnfromwhattheyhaverea d It is especially useful for readers to summarize the content of thetext.Summarizingmeansrewritingorparaphrasinginformationbyusingour ownwords.Doingthiscanhelptoreviewandmemorizeinformation, and preparing information or ideas from different sources to build upbackgroundknowledge(Mikulecky &Jeffries,2007,p.200).

5 Inthepersonalizationstage,learnersareaskedtoexploitthecommunicative function of the reading text, e.g solve a problem, createa poster,etc.

Forthesereasons,teachersneedtotakelearnersthroughthesefive- stagephases.Moreover,itwouldbebetteriftheteachercanselectafamiliartextforlearners (Benati,2020,p.238).

2.4 Related studies on applying schema activation to teach L2 readingcomprehension

Desiring to investigate the effect ofschema activationon languagelearners to study reading comprehension, some research on schema has beenconducted bothin Vietnamandabroad.

Tran Thi Thanh Dieu (2015) conducted a study to find out the impact ofKWL(Know-Want-Learn)methodonpassivestudents’readingcomprehension skills The research was carried out with 90 Vietnamese pre-intermediate students To collect data, several instruments used were lessonplanning reflection sheets, two tests, videotape, colleagues’ observation andcriticizing and filled questionnaire The finding of the study showed that withthe use of KWL strategy, students seemed to be more active and interested inthe lesson. Group activity in the KWL strategy also gave students naturalatmosphere,freedomfromtheteacher-watching pressure.

Nguyen Thi Thuy Trang (2012) carried on another study to examine theeffect of content schema (topic familiarity) on ESL reading comprehension, tofind out whether time constraint affected ESL reading comprehension, and toexploretheinteractionbetweenthesetwofactors.Fourreadingtexts(twowith familiar topics and the others were unfamiliar) in English of the same level ofreadability and difficulty were used as instruments The results showed thatbackgroundknowledgeplayedasignificantroleinstudents’readingcomprehe nsion, and participants’ performance was significantly better in theno time constraint condition than in the time constraint condition In terms oftheinteraction,topicfamiliarityandnotimeconstraintcreatedthemoststimulatingen vironmentforsuccessfulreadingcomprehensionasmeasuredbytheclozeprocedure.

To Thi Ngoc Huyen and Nguyen Huynh Trang (2020) tried to find outteachers’ perceptions towards the role of schema activation in English readingcomprehensionandthemostcommoninstructionalstrategiesEFLteachersuseto foster schema activation in English reading lessons The sample of thecurrent study consisted of 77 English language teachers from several highschoolslocatedintheMekongDeltaofVietnam.Inthisstudy,aquestionnairewas used to collect quantitative data, whereas a semi-structured interview wasused to collect qualitative data The research findings revealed that althoughhighschoolEnglishteachershadpositiveperceptiontowardstheroleofschema activationinEnglishreadingcomprehension,theyconfirmedinstructional strategies were not always used to activate students’ schemas inEnglish reading comprehension In addition, these participants tended to usemoresimplestrategiesto activate theirstudents’ schemas.

Jian-ping&Li- sha(2016)investigatedstudents’viewsonEnglishreadingandthreetypesofschema s(languageschema,contentschemaandformschema).Thesubjectschosenforthisinvestigatio nwere400studentsinGrade

8 The students were asked to fill in a questionnaire anonymously From theresult, linguistic schema played the most important role in students’ Englishreading.In t erm s of c on te nt s c h e m a , itsh o w e d t h a t m o s t st u d e n t s l ik ed t h e teachers teaching background knowledge, but the majority of them could notconjecturethecontentbytherelatedknowledge.Relatedtoformschema,morethan 70% of the students were willing to read story and culture; however, theyknew little about exposition and argument, which made them difficult tounderstand.

Cho,YoungAh,&Ma,JeeHyun(2020)examinedtheeffectsofschemaactivation andreadingstrategyuseonL2learners’readingcomprehension.Theparticipants consisted of 89 Korean first-year college students Three majorinstruments were used in this study: a background questionnaire; pre-, post-,anddelayedreadingcomprehensiontests;andpre-andpost-questionnaires.Intheir findings, both the schema building and reading strategy task groupsshowed significant improvements in terms of immediate learning effects, butthe reading strategy group showed an added degree of improvement over theschemabuildingandcontrolgroupsintermsoflong- termreadingcomprehension.

Yohannes Tefera Mengesha (2012) identified whether schema- basedpre-reading tasks (SBPRT) improve students’ reading comprehension. Thesubjects of the study were 56 first-year English major students taking the‘Readingskills’summercourseatJimmaUniversity.Datacollectioninstrument sincludedpre-test,post-testandfinalexamtest.Thedifferencewasthat no treatment was given in the pre-test whereas SBPRT was given astreatment in the post-test He concluded that students generally performedbetterinthepost-testthaninthepre- test.Therefore,pre-readingtasksfacilitated students’ reading comprehension.

ThestudyofMaryamMahmudi(2012)hadwiderrangebecauseitaimedtoinvesti gatetheeffectsofthreetypesofschema-buildingactivities(content, formal,andlinguistic)onIranianlearners’bothlisteningandreadingcomprehensio nskills.Theparticipantswererandomlyassignedtheexperimentalandcontrolgrou ps.Hisfindingsgavedirectsupporttotheschematheory, that was comprehension (whether oral or written) happened only whenalinkwasestablishedbetweenthenewlyincominginformationandthealreadyexistingba ckground.Thesefindingsalsosupportedthegeneralconceptoftop-down readingandlistening.

Palita Thongyon and Thanyapa Chiramanee (2011) conducted a studyfor three purposes: (1) to compare the learners’ comprehension ability beforeand after the implementation of two types of pre-reading activities (guessingreadingcontentfrompicturesandaskingpre-readingquestions),

(2)tocomparethe effectiveness of these two pre-reading activities, and (3) to investigate thelearners’attitudestowardstheimplementationofthetwopre- readingactivities.Tocollectdataforthestudy,theresearcherchosereadingcomprehensio ntestsandquestionnaire.SixtystudentsinGrade9wererecruitedtoparticipateinthestudy. They were assigned into 2 groups based on the scores sought from thetest of reading comprehension administered prior to the experiment Based onthe findings of the study, it could be concluded that the subjects performedstatisticallysignificantlybetterinthereadingcomprehensiontestaftertheyhadgi ven the two pre-reading activities Moreover, guessing reading content frompictures were more effective in increasing learners’ reading comprehensionabilitythanpre- readingquestioningactivity.Theresultsfromthequestionnaireshowed that the subjects had positive attitudes towards the 2 types of pre-reading activities.

(1985)showedcontraryresultwiththesestudiesabove.Hisstudyexaminedtheeffectsof priorknowledgeactivationonreaders’comprehensionofcompatiblean d incompatible text Fifty-two 6 th grade students were assigned randomly to oneoftwogroups.Theinstrumentsofthisstudywerecompatibleandincompatibletext and a questionnaire Based on the results of pre-experimental knowledgedomainandpilotdatameasures,thepassageonrattlesnakeswasjudgedcomp atible, while the one on sunlight was considered incompatible due to thecounter- intuitiveinformationitcontained.Surprisingly,thefindingssupportedthe notion that prior knowledge may interfere with, rather thanfacilitate,readingcomprehensionundercertainconditions.Thereasonsforthec ontroversial result might be due to the diversity of measures used to collectdataandvariouswaysto operatebackgroundknowledge.

Thusfar,thereviewofrelatedresearchhasrevealedtwoopposingtrendsfor the effects of background knowledge on L2 reading comprehension.

(1991) He carried out his research to examine the effects of priorknowledge on the recall of text.

Participants in the study were eighty- ninestudentsenrolledinbothFrenchandItalianatauniversity.Theywereaskedtoreadthr eedifferenttextsidentifiedasFrenchorItaliannewspaperarticles,andthey were instructed to recount in English what they had just read after eachpassage before continuing to the next article. When they had finished writingall three recall protocols, they were given a list in English about the topicswhichtheyhadjustreadandinstructedtoranktheminorderaccordingtotheirprior knowledge related to these topics These range from simply classifying asubject as unknowledgeable in a topic a priori to extensive testing of thesubject’s knowledge base Their familiarity was judged to result from theirprior knowledge Each recall protocol was scored based on the percentage ofthepossiblepropositionscontainedintheprotocol.Unexpectedly,nosignificant d i f f e r e n c e s betweencomprehensiono f familiarand unfamiliar topics as well as between familiar and unfamiliar recall for more proficiencyand less proficiency readers were shown in the results In other words, contentschema were proved to have no impact on L2 reading comprehension Thelimitations in this study was that the activity of rank ordering might not bereliableenoughforelicitinginformationaboutthedegreeofbackgroundknowledge of readers.

RegardingpreviousrelatedstudiesandavailableliteratureinthefieldofEFLreadi ngteachingandlearning,theprocessoflearningreadingcomprehension by implementing schema-based activities is of much concern.Amongtheprovedstudies,mixedapproachtoresearchbetweenqualitativeandquantitativ einvestigationofspecificschema- basedactivitiesinreadingcomprehensionforEFLhighschoolstudentshasstillbeennotr ecognized.ThisgapisnecessarytobefilledsinceitcanenrichknowledgeandabilityofEn glishreadingcomprehensionlevelforhighschoolstudentsinVietnam,whichisthereason forthe presentresearch.

Thepurposeofthischapteristoprovidethejustificationsfortheresearchmetho dofthestudy.Firstly,theresearchquestionsandthehypothesesarepresented.Secon dly,thedescriptionoftheresearchdesignandthe participants of the study follow Next, the research instruments used tocollectdataforthestudyaredescribedindetail.Finally,thechapterisfinishedbytheresear chproceduretoconductthestudy.

Researchaimandhypotheses

Researchquestions

The objectives of this research are to test the effects of schema- basedactivities on EFL learners’ reading comprehension andtoexaminetheEFLlearners’ perceptions towards the use of these activities in learning readingcomprehension.

In order to measure and evaluate the effects of schema-based activitiesofEFLlearners’readingcomprehension,thefollowingquestionsareproposed:

1 To what extent does the use of schema-based activities affectEFL learners’ achievement in reading comprehension?

2 What are EFL learners’ attitudes towards the use of schema- based activities in learning readingcomprehension?

Hypotheses

Thestudywasbasedonschematheoryofteachingreadingcomprehensiona l o n g w i t h t h e p r e v i o u s s t u d i e s o n t h e u s e of s c h e m a - b a s e d activitiesinteachingandlearningEnglishreadingcomprehension.Thehypotheses ofthepresentstudyareasfollows:

1 Thereisnostatisticallysignificantdifferenceintheachievement in reading comprehension between the experimental group andthecontrolgroupinthe post-test.

2 Thereisnostatisticallysignificantdifferenceintheachievement in reading comprehension before and after the intervention of theexperimental group betweenthepre-testand post-test.

3 Thereisnostatisticallysignificantdifferencebetweenthemaleand female students’ attitudes towards the use of schema-based activities inlearning readingcomprehension.

Researchdesign

Thestudymainlyfollowedquasi-experimentalresearchwiththepre-testandpost- test Thestudyinvolved two groupsofparticipants labelledtheexperimentalandcontrolgroup.Inthisstudy,bothquantitativeandqualitati veapproach were employed to answer the research questions The quantitativedata was collected to measure the effects of using schema-based activities onEFL learners’ reading comprehension while the qualitative approach with thesemi- structuredinterviewwasusedtoinvestigatethelearners’attitudestowardsusingsch ema-basedactivitiesinlearningreadingcomprehension.

Theinterventionofthestudylastedwithin12weeks.Duringtheintervention, both groups received both online and traditional face-to- faceinstructions.Thecontrolgroupwastaughtreadingcomprehensionintraditionalways , with no focus on content schemas Meanwhile, for the experimentalgroup, schema-based activities

(independent variable) were implemented andstudents’a c h i e v e m e n t i n r e a d i n g c o m p r e h e n s i o n ( d e p e n d e n t v a r i a b l e ) w a s measured The implementation of schema-based activities related to contentschemas wasmonitoredduring thestudy.

To collect quantitative data for the study, the pre-test and post- testdesignedintheformofreadingcomprehensiontestsandthequestionnaireusedafterthepos t-testwereadministered.Inordertocollectqualitativedataforthestudy, thesemi- structuredinterviewwasconductedtodocumentin- depthinformationabouttheparticipationonschema-basedactivitiesandperceptionsof participants in the experimental group towards the use of schema-basedactivities for learningreadingcomprehension.

Participants

Teacher

Students

This study was completed at a language center in Khanh Hoa Province.Thesubjectsweregrade10 th studentsinvolving80participantsfromtwointactcl asses.Thetwoclasseswererandomlyassignedtotheexperimentalgroupandcontrol group The control group consisted of 40 students (17 males and

23females)andtheexperimentalgroupconsistedof40students(16malesand24females).T able3.1presents thebackground information ofthetwogroups.

Control group 40 17males 23females 7years

Materialandtimeframe

Materialandlessonplan

Thirty-sixreadingcomprehensionlearningmaterialswerechosen partlybased on the topics from unit 5, unit 6, unit 7 and unit 8 of the grade 10 th coursebook (the ten-year curriculum).

These reading comprehension materialswereadaptedfromdifferentsourcesincludingEnglishexercise10(LuuHoangTri, 2020),Multiple-choiceexercise10(HoàngThịXuânHoa,2020),Mindsetfor IELTS level 1

(2017) and Cambridge Preliminary English Test (2010) byUniversity of Cambridge The lesson plans used for each group are brieflypresented inTable3.2.

Students skim to find the main idea andscan for specific information to deal withthetext.

Students give their answers and teachergivesfeedback.

Students summarize the main content ofthetext.

Teacherletsstudentsdosomeoffollowingactivi ties: o lookthroughthetext/ titleandbrainstormofwhattheykno waboutthetopic. o speedtalkto theclass o discussin group o look through pictures or watch ashort video o pre-questioning

Teacher asks students to identify the texttypes and models one or two examples (ifthetext types isnot familiar).Teacherprovidesstudentswithkeywords.

Students skim to find the main idea andscan for specific information to deal withthetext.

Students give their answers and teachergivesfeedback.

Students summarize the main content andsharetheirthoughtaboutthetopicwiththecla ss.

Timeframe

Both groups were taught reading comprehension for 12 weeks,eachweekhas3periods(totaling36periods),eachperiodlasted90minutesinwhich45min utesfor readingskills.

Instruments

Readingcomprehensiontests

The pre-test and post-test of the study had the same content and format,thetotalwordsinbothtestswererespectivelyequal.Beforetheadministrationof the pre-test to the participants, the pre-test was piloted by 10 students of anintact class from the same place to test the reliability and validity of theinstrument These intact students had the same background as the participants.Asaresult,thereliabilityandvalidityofthetwotestswouldbestrengthene d.

Hoang Van Van (2018) claims that Grade 10 students fit into CEFRLevelB1-

1.Thus,thereadingtestsweresimilarinlevelofdifficultyandtakenfromEnglish10exercise ofLuuHoangTri(2020)andCambridgePreliminaryEnglishTest1(2010).Bothtestslastedf or20minutesandfollowedtheformatinTable3.3.

2 5 Matching Matchfivedescriptionofpeopletoeightshorttext sonparticulartopic,showingdetailedcomprehe nsion

Readatextfordetailedcomprehension,inferen ce as well as writer’s attitude, opinionandpurpose

Thequestionnaire

The first part of the questionnaire was about general information of theparticipants such as their age, their gender, their time for studying English andtheaveragetime theyspentpracticing reading comprehension.

The second part of the questionnaire was to find out the schema- basedactivitiesthatparticipantswereinterestedinandtheirattitudestowardstheuseof them It was based on a five-point Likert scale, which was adapted from thequestionnaire construction models designed by Nashmiah Awadh Almutairi(2012) - who conducted a study to investigate the effects of the schema theoryon teaching listening comprehension and how this theory helped EFL teachersteach listening effectively, and by Tô Thị Ngọc Huyền and Nguyễn HuỳnhTrang(2021)– whosestudywastoexamineEFLteachers’perceptionstowardsschemaactivation inEnglish readingcomprehension.

Thesemi-structuredinterview

The semi-structured interview was administrated after the questionnairehadbeencarriedout.Thisinterviewgavetheresearcheradeeperunderstan dingof students’ entire process of learning as well as their perceptions of schema- basedactivities.6outof80studentsintheexperimentalgroupwereinterviewed.The 6 students were 2 students who got the highest scores,2studentswhogottheaveragescores,and2studentswhogottheleastinthe post-test Such choice could help to collect different ideas based on learners’levels The participants were expected to give comment on what they founduseful or less useful about schema-based activities, what they liked or did notlike,whatchallengestheyencounteredwhilejoiningtheseactivitiesandwhetherth eyconnectedthemwith their self-studyhabit.

Datacollectionprocedure

The study encompassed three phases Phase 1 lasted two weeks beforethe intervention Phase 2 was the administration of the intervention with theduration of 12 weeks Phase 3 was conducted after the intervention and lastedoneweek.

Phase 1 was aimed at preparing for the participants’ enrollment and theinstrumentsofthestudy.Apilotstudywascarriedouttoseeifthestudentshadany difficulties in dealing with the test and to verify whether the pre-testensured the reliability The participants in the pilot study were ten

10 th gradestudents,whoseEFLcontextwascloselysimilartotheparticipantsintheactua lstudy.Afterthat,theresearcherrandomlyassignedtwointactclasseswheretheresearcherwaswo rkingintotheexperimentalgroupandthecontrolgroup.Thepre- test,then,wasdonebythetwogroupswithoutnotificationabouttheformatofthetest.Thedat awasruntoanalyzethereliabilitybyusingSPSS(StatisticalPackagefor theSocialSciences)StatisticsSoftware26.

In phase 2, the intervention was administered in 12 weeks The durationof the intervention was equivalent to the length of time allocated to teachingfour units of the curriculum During the administration of the intervention, theexperimentalgroupwasinstructedwiththeschema- basedactivitiesbeforeandafterreadingcomprehension.

Inphase3,after12weeksofintervention,thepost-testwasadministeredimmediately on the control group and the experimental group to measurestudents’ reading comprehension The participants got no notification of theadministration of the post-test The procedure to administer the post-test andgradetheparticipants’ testpaperwaslikethoseof thepre-test.

Afterward, the questionnaire was conducted by the participants in theexperimental group.

Finally, six participants in the experimental group were invited to join asemi-structuredinterviewwiththeresearchertogainfurtherinformation.

Validityandreliability

The validity of the reading comprehension tests was strengthened withdetailedformatbuiltupfromHoangVanVan(2018)’stheory,whichhasbeenwidely accepted Moreover, the reliability of the data was analyzed with thehelpofScaleTestinSPSS.Thus,thetestswereprovedtobevalidandreliableenough tobeusedinthisstudy.

So far, the research methods, research procedures, samples and otheraspects related to research methodology have been presented in thisChapter.Findings of the study are presented in the next chapter, Chapter IV,withrelevantdata,examples,and interpretations.

The purpose of this chapter is to report the results of the study from thedata collected by reading comprehension tests, questionnaire and interview.The chapter begins with the students’ reading comprehension level before andafter the intervention Then, the information collected from the questionnaireis presented Finally,the data from the semi-structured interview is analyzedinorder to giveanin- depth explanation ofthefindingsofthestudy.

Students’achievementinreadingcomprehensionbetweenthecontr olgroupandexperimentalgroupbeforeandaftertheintervention

Students’t i m e o f p r a c t i c i n g r e a d i n g c o m p r e h e n s i o n o u t s

Fromthetableabove,therearesixparticipantspracticingreadingcomprehen sionforlessthan1hourperweek(15%),sevenparticipantspracticing reading comprehension for more than 3 hours per week (17.5%).Many of the participants spend from 1 to 3 hours per week practicing readingcomprehension(27participants,67.5%).Itcanbeassumedthattheparticipantspractic ed readingcomprehensionat anaveragetime perweek.

It can be concluded that all the participants have the same background.They are all grade 10 th students who have experienced 8 years of learningEnglish officially; moreover, the time they spend practicing English readingcomprehensionafterschoolisquitesimilar.Thus,theseexternalelementsmayno t unexpectedly affect the results of schema-based activities on students’reading comprehensionduring the intervention.

A Descriptive Statistics Test was carried out to examine the total meanscoreofstudents’preferencesforeachschema-basedactivityinlearningreading comprehension.The resultispresentedinTable4.11.

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std.Deviation

Table4.11illustratesthatthetotalpreferencemeanscoreisratherhigherthan the average (M = 3.63, SD = 598) It can be inferred that most of thestudents enjoyschema-basedactivities.

Presented in Table 4.12 is the Descriptive Statistics Data of the meanscoresofparticipants’preferencetowardsspecificschema-basedactivities.

Talkinga b o u t w h a t h a v e b e e n learntfrom the reading text

As illustrated in Table 4.12, ‘Quick talking to the class’ and

‘Talkingabout what have been learnt from the text’ get the lowest mean score (Quicktalking M = 3.45, SD = 1.154; Talking about what have been learnt M

= 3.40,SD = 1.081), followed by ‘Pre-questioning’ (M = 3.63, SD = 925).

‘Usingaudio visual aids’ and ‘Group discussion’ are the highest (Using audio visualaids M =4.00,SD =.679;GroupdiscussionM=3.65,SD=.834).

Despite the difference in preference of these schema-based activities, itis clear that all participants in the experimental group have interest in this typeofactivities.Itissuggestedforteacherstouseaudiovisualaidssuchasvideos,pictur es,maps,charts,etc.

(Dutta,1994)whicharerelatedtothetopicsstudentsaregoingtolearnastheyareinterestin gandcanhelpstudentsacquireunfamiliar knowledge easier Group discussion is also a good way to activatetheir background information because they can share everything with theirfriends and reduce the sense of worry What is more, it would be better ifteachers can develop useful questions to make students brainstorm about thecontent or the text type, which help them prepare themselves before reading,which matches the theory of Aebersold, J.A and Field (1997) and Brown(2007), and the study of Tran Thi Thanh Thuy & Phuong Hoang Yen (2018).The two lowest score items are related to

‘talking’ which may be because oftheiranxietyaboutEnglishspeakingskills(Thornbury,2005,p.25).Teachers,therefore,should create a stress-free classroom environment so that studentscanfeelmorecomfortabletotalktotheclass.Moreover,itisimportantforEFLteachersto choosesuitableactivitiestoactivateandenhancestudents’schemasinreadinglessons.

Students’attitudestowardstheuseofschema- basedactivitiesinlearningreadingcomprehension 49 4.3.4 Differences in male and female students’ attitudes towards the useofschema-basedactivitiesinleaningreadingcomprehension 56 4.4 Students’understandingof usin g sc h e m a -

A Descriptive Statistics Test was carried out to examine the total meanscoreofstudents’attitudestowardstheimplementationofschema- basedactivities in learning reading comprehension The result is presented inTable4.13.

Table 4.13 Overall mean score of students’ attitudes towards the use of schema- basedactivitiesinlearning reading comprehension

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std.Deviation

The result from the data analysis shows that the participants in theexperimental group have positive attitudes towards the application of schema-based activities into reading comprehension periods they were experiencing asthetotalmeanscoreisquitehigh(M= 3.89,SD=.41).

4.3.3.1 Students’ affective attitudes towards the use of schema- basedactivities inlearningreadingcomprehension

The first six questions in part 2 were created to investigate participants’affectiveattitudestowardstheuseofschema- basedactivitiesinlearningreadingcomprehension.ADescriptiveStatisticsTestwas carriedouttoexploretheoverallmeanoflearners’affectiveattitudes.Table4.14showsth is result.

Table 4.14 Students’ overall affective attitudes towards the use of schema- basedactivitiesinlearning readingcomprehension

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std.Deviation

After that, a One-Sample T Test was computed to evaluate whether themeanofthefirstsixquestionsishigherthan3.5(theacceptedmeanforpositivefeeling towardstheseactivities).Theresultispresented inTable4.15.

Table 4.15 Students’ positive affective attitudes towards the use of schema- basedactivitiesinlearning readingcomprehension

As can be seen from Tables 4.13 and 4.14, the Mean – Affective of theparticipants (M = 3.85, SD = 464) is higher than the scale 3.5 of the positiveattitudes (t = 4.526, df = 39, p = 000) This means that the participants’affective attitudes towards the use schema-based activities in learning readingcomprehensionishighlypositive.

Table 4.16 Students’ detailed affective attitudes towards the use of schema- basedactivitiesinlearning readingcomprehension

10 Schema-based activities increase my interest instudyingreading comprehension.

11 Schema-based activities make the classroomenvironmentmoreenjoyable and lessstressful.

From Table4.16,itcanbesaidthatschema-basedactivitiesmadestudents curious about the content of the reading text, as marked by item 8which gets the highest mean score (M = 4.00, SD = 778); followed by item 7(M=3.95,SD=.986)whichmeansthattheseactivitiesareeasiertounderstand.Theyalsobri ngpositivefeelingsforstudentsbeforereadingsuchasenjoyment(item 11, M = 3.80, SD

= 823), confidence (item 9, M = 3.68, SD = 917),interest (item10,M

As for learners’ affective aspects, schema building facilitates learners’extrinsic motivation, environment orientation, feeling orientation, and effortorientation The schema-based activities can change their perceptions to bemoreactive andproductive.

4.3.3.2 Students’ cognitive attitudes towards the use of schema- basedactivities inlearningreadingcomprehension

A Descriptive Statistics Test was run to explore the mean of learners’cognitiveattitudestowardstheapplicationofschema- basedactivitiesinlearning readingcomprehension.

Table 4.17 Students’ cognitive attitudes towards the use of schema-based activities inlearningreading comprehension

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std.Deviation

AOne-Sample TTestwasruntofigureoutwhetherthe meanofcognitiveattitudesdifferedfrom3.5 (themediumlevelforpositiveattitudes).

Table 4.18 Students’ positive cognitive attitudes towards the use of schema- basedactivitiesinlearning reading comprehension

AscanbeseenfromTables4.17and4.18,thecognitivemean(M=3.87,SD = 471) is higher than the scale 3.5 This means that participants’ cognitiveattitudestowardstheuseofschema- basedactivitiesinlearningreadingcomprehensionare somewhatpositive.

AnotherDescriptiveStatisticsTestwasruntofigureouttheparticipants’detailed cognitiveattitudes.Theresult displays inTable4.19.

Table 4.19 Students’ detailed cognitive attitudes towards the use of schema- basedactivitiesinlearning readingcomprehension

15 Pre-reading stage including schema-based activities ismore interesting and helpful than vocabulary teachingonly.

19 Thei n f o r m a t i o n I h a v e a l r e a d y k n o w n h e l p m e i n guessingthe onesIdo not know.

20 Schema- baseda c t i v i t i e s m o t i v a t e m e t o d o m o r e readingco mprehension tasks outsidetheclassroom.

23 Schema- baseda c t i v i t i e s m a k e m e k n o w m o r e f r o m sharingideas with my classmates.

24 Schema-based activities challenge me to ask questionstomyself to makeprediction about the text.

The results shows, firstly, it is believed that the most important role ofschema-based activities is providing students with real-world knowledge andspecific purpose before reading (item 18, M = 4.20, SD = 1.067), which is inaccordance with the theory of Benati (2020), Caldwell (2011) and

Macceca(2014).S e c o n d l y , s c h e m a - b a s e d a c t i v i t i e s a r e t h o u g h t t o m a k e s t u d e n t s t o practice thinking and analyzing (item 21, M = 4.07, SD = 656) (Hood

&Solomon, 1985) Thirdly, like the theory of Goodman (1967), it is suggestedthat based on schema activation, students may assimilate the information fromtext into their schemas and make changes to accommodate new information,then, may recall the information in a more coherent manner, and may create amentalrepresentationthatguidestheunderstandingoftheincominginformation( i t e m 14,M=4.03,SD=.606,item19,M=4.03,SD=.733,item22,M=3.92,SD=1.023).Fourt hly,mostoftheparticipantslikelearningwithschema-based activities rather than vocabulary teaching only (item 15, M =4.05, SD = 783) Finally, it is shown that activated schemas can help tostimulate their reading speed (item 12, M = 4.03, SD = 800), which contrastswith the teachers’ perceptions towards the roles of schema activation in thestudyofToThiNgocHuyen&NguyenHuynhTrang(2020).Becauseoftheseusefulness, schema-basedactivitiesencouragelearnersto practicereadingskills more (item 20,

M = 3.73, SD = 716) and try to enhance their ownschemas outside theclassroom(item25,M=4.05,SD=.876).

From all the data presented above, the findings of the current studyshowsthatschema- basedactivitiesispositivelybeneficialforenhancinglearners’motivationandcompr ehensionability,whichsupportsthehypothesisthat EFL learners prefer studying with this type of activities.Besides creatingpositive feelings for students in pre-reading stage, schema- activation also hasgood effect on improving students’ ability in English reading comprehensionin both increasing reading speed and understanding reading content In short,all of the participants in the experimental group hold positive feelings andcognitive belief with respect to the use of schema-based activities in learningreading comprehension What is more, these activities also stimulate students’self-learning after school.

4.3.4 Differences in male and female students’ attitudes towards the use ofschema-based activitiesinleaningreading comprehension

AnIndependent-SampleTTestwasruntoseemaleandfemalestudents’attitudes towards the implementation of schema-based activities in learningreading comprehension in the experimental group Table 4.20 shows the meanscoreoflearners’ attitudes.

Table 4.20 Mean score of male and female students’ attitudes towards the use ofschema-basedactivities in learning readingcomprehension

Students’attitudestowardstheuse ofschema- basedactivitiesinlearningreadingcom prehension

As can be seen from Table 4.20, once again, both male and femaleparticipants are proved to have positive attitudes towards the use of schema-based activities in learning reading comprehension (Mmale = 3.88,

Another Independent-Sample T Test was run to check the whether thedifference between male and female is significant or not The result is showninTable4.21.

Table 4.21 Difference between male and female learners’ attitudes towards the use ofschema-basedactivities in learning readingcomprehension t df p MeanDifference

Theresultindicatesthatthereisnosignificantdifferenceinparticipants’attitudestowa rdstheuseofschema-basedactivitiesinlearningreadingcomprehension regardinggender(p = 876> 0.05).

In conclusion, both male and female participants hold positive attitudestowards the use of schema-based activities in learning reading comprehensionand thereisnodifferencebetweenthem.

4.4 Students’ understanding of using schema-based activities in learningEnglishreadingcomprehension- itsbenefits,challengesandsuggestions

Aftercollectingthedatafromthequestionnaire,theresearcherinterviewed six students among participants in experimental group in order tofurther identify their experience, the benefits and difficulties they face whileparticipatinginschema-basedactivities.Theface-to-facesemi- structuredinterviews were audio-recorded and transcribed Firstly, all of the participantsassertedtheusefulnessofschema- basedactivitiesinlearningreadingcomprehension.For example,theysaid:

“… I think schema-based activities are useful and interesting; it helpsme brainstorm about the topic and the genre of the reading passage, soIamready todealwithit.”( P a r t i c i p a n t s A and B)

“Schemaactivationmayhelpmepredictthecontentofthereadingtexts,aswe llassomemainideas inthesetexts.”(Participant C)

“… Through discussion with my group members, I can enhancemy knowledge The discussion is so interesting because I can shareanything with my friends; I feel less worried before reading because Iknow what I am required to do; I can understand the meaning of newwords andtextgenre…”(ParticipantsCand F)

Thewordsthatweremostlyrepeatedinstudents’responseswereconnectedto theinterestingandunderstandablefeaturesof schema- basedactivities.Asmentionedabove,theyhelpedthemgetreadyandfeltlessworriedbef oredealingwiththereadingtasks,especiallywhenthetopicwasunfamiliar,and the genre ofthe reading passagewasstrange.

What is more, their reading skills has also been affected positively byschema activation, as mentioned respectively by participants A, B, C, D and F“Myreadingskillshavebeenslightlyimproved.”.Specifically,theysaid:

“ … Now I read with clear purposes, I am aware of what I amgoing to do, what I am going to read about, and I can understand thecontent ofthetextclearer.”(ParticipantsA andF)

“… Sometimes I can guess the writer’s implication and meaningofnewwords basedon myactivated schemas.”(Participant B)

“My reading comprehension speed is faster, and I can guess themeaningofthetextthoughtherearesomenewwords.”(ParticipantD)

Thirdly,themostinterestingschema- basedactivitieswerealsomentionedbytheinterviewees.Therewerethreeoutofsixstud ents(participantsA,BandC)saidtheywerekeenongroupdiscussionastheycouldfreelyex presstheirknowledge.Inaddition,twoparticipants(participantsBandD) mentioned they preferred audio visual aids like videos and pictures mostsince it gave them practical knowledge The others (participants D and E)expressed theirinterestsin sharingwiththewholeclass.

“When you asked us to discuss in group, we share lots of ideaswithout the fear of this is right or wrong At that time, I feel morecomfortable and less nervous Besides, I can get more knowledge frommyfriends.”(Participants B,C and F)

“Watchingvideosgivememorereal-worldknowledgeandmakesme concentrate and feel excited, as it is easier to understand abstractreading topics.”(Participants B andD)

Theparticipantsalsoposedsomechallengeswhilejoiningschema-basedactivities. Distraction was the problem that two participants mentioned, asstudentsA andFsaid,

“… I sometimes feel distracted because some of the members inmygroupchatwith otherswithoutdiscussing.”

Inaddition,theparticipantsalsomentionedseveralproblemstheyencounter ed when learning with schema-based activities, for example timeallocated for the activities is short, the necessary vocabulary and experiencesarelimited.Thesethings arementionedbyparticipantsA,B,C,Eand F,

“The time allocated for pre-reading activities is sometimes not enoughfor ustodiscuss.”(ParticipantA)

“There are few videos containing many new words, which makesme difficult to understand, so at that time, I just pay attention to themotion pictures.”(ParticipantB)

“Imaybringawealthofexperiences,knowledgeofreadingtext’stopic to the classroom, but what lack is a way to express this knowledgeinEnglish.”(ParticipantC)

“My practical knowledge is not wide enough to share my ideaswithmy partners.”(ParticipantsEand F)

When asked, the participants all said that they would like teachers toapply various types of schema-based activities into reading comprehensionlessons Moreover, they also suggested some ways to make these activitiesmore interesting Participant A suggested that after discussion, they could taketurns to present their ideas; the group having more correct answers would bethe winner. Participant F hoped that instead of chatting, all group memberswould concentrate on discussing; and in post-reading stage, she would like allthegroups towriteanessay,towriteamaporpictureaboutwhatthey read.

Finally,mostofthemagreedtotrytobroadentheirbackgroundknowledgeaft erschool.Theythinkthatreadingbooks,usingsocialnetworkingsites, or talking with their friends can help them to know more about the realworld Besides, some of them will join English groups on Facebook and learnvocabulary iftheyareinterested.

“I think I will read news when surfing the Internet or readingbooks.”(ParticipantsA,DandF)

“I will watch news on TV or on the Internet I will also learn newwordsbywatchingvideoson Youtube.”(ParticipantsB,DandF)

“I will learn new words through reading texts or join Englishgroups If there are new words related to the topic that I am interestedin,I willtakenotethem.”(ParticipantA)

Based on the results of the post-test, questionnaire and the informationgiven by six representative participants in the experimental group, activatingrelevantschemasisprovedtobringbenefitstoEFLlearnersinreadingco mprehensiona c h i e v e m e n t a n d f e e l i n g s S c h e m a a c t i v a t i o n m a y h e l p t h e studentspredictthecontentaswellassomemainideasofthereadingtexts,andmakeinference aboutwriters’opinions.Besides,theycangetmoreknowledgeandunderstandunfamiliart opicsbetter.Withoutschemasrelatedtothetopics,studentsstillunderstandthereadingtexti ntheliterallevel;however,theymaynot make inferences about information embedded implicitly in the text. Thus,it is clear that students with sufficient schemas understand and rememberreading texts better than those with little schemas What is more, students feelless stressed and more comfortable before reading with the help of schemaactivation.

Most of the participants show their interest in schema-based activities,especiallyforgroupdiscussionandusingaudiovisualaids.Indiscussiona ctivity, the students feel comfortable to share their ideas together without thefearofthisisrightorwrong.Intermsofaudiovisualaids,itisusefulforabstractand difficult topicsasit canmakestudent easyto understand.

Summaryofthefindings

Thestudymainlyfocusedontheextenttowhichschema-basedactivitiesaffect students’ reading comprehension and their attitudes towards the use ofthese activities The study was conducted in 12 weeks at a language center inKhanh Hoa Province Eighty grade

10 th students from two intact classes wereinvited to participate in the research. The data for the current study wascollectedbyreadingcomprehensionpre- andpost-tests,thequestionnaire,andthesemi- structuredinterview.Itwashypothesizedthat(1)thereisnostatisticallysignificantd ifferenceintheachievementinreadingcomprehensionbetweentheexperimentalgroupandthe controlgroupinthepost-test,

(2)thereisnostatisticallysignificantdifferenceintheachievementinreadingcompre hension before and after the intervention of the experimental groupbetween the pre-test and post-test, and (3) there is no statistically significantdifference between the male and female students’ attitudes towards the use ofschema- based activities in learningreadingcomprehension.

The study was carried out based on the following framework. Benati(2020,p.236)claimsthatreadingcanbeseenasaninteractiveprocessbetweenthe reader and the text The text includes words, sentences and paragraphswhich have meaning The reader needs to use his/her personal knowledge,skills and strategies to decode what that meaning is In addition, Benati alsoshowst w o s t r a t e g i e s o f r e a d i n g c o m p r e h e n s i o n : b o t t o m - u p a n d t o p - d o w n

Bottom-up strategies are used by learners to determine linguistics informationfrom the small to large units, and top-down strategies involve processingbeyondtheanalysisofbothlinguisticsandbackgroundknowledgetounders tand the text In terms of schema, Carrell and Eisterhold (1983, p. 560)suggest two types of schemas Formal schema is defined as

“backgroundknowledge about the formal, rhetorical, organizational structures of differentkindsoftexts”;contentschemarefersto“backgroundknowledgeofthecontentareao fthe text”.

Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that there was nostatisticallysignificantdifferenceinlearners’achievementinreadingcomprehension between the experimental and control group – which supportsthe first hypothesis However, it is hard to deny that the participants in theexperimental group performed significantly better in the post-test than in thepre-test Regarding the effects of schema- based activities, the result generallymatchespreviousstudieslikeCho&Ma(2020),Mengesha(2012),Smithetal. (2021),Trang(2012),andPearsonetal.

(1979)intermsofimprovingstudents’readingcomprehensionwiththehelpofschemaactivati on.However,theresultisdifferentfromotherstudieswhichfoundnoimpact(e.g.Hammadou( 1991)),and some studies which reported a negative impact of background knowledgeon reading comprehension (e.g Alverman et al (1985)) In short, this currentstudy proves the positive effect of schema-based, that is improving learners’achievementinreadingcomprehension.

Whenitcomestoparticipants’attitudestowardsschema-basedactivitiesin learning reading comprehension collected by the questionnaire and semi- structuredinterview,allofthemheldpositiveattitudes.Mostoftheparticipantsagreedthats chema-basedactivitiesareinterestingandenjoyable,providereal- worldknowledgeandspecificpurposeforreading, helptopracticethinki ng and analyzing, assimilate new information from texts into schemas, increasingreadingspeedandsoon.ThisresultsupportsthestudyofPalitaThongyonandTh anyapaChiramanee(2011)andJian-ping&Li- sha(2016).Moreover,inthestudyofT o ThiNgocHuyenandNguyenHuynhTrang(2020) aboutteachers’perceptions towards schema activation, it was proved not to increase students’speed in reading, but the students in this study admitted that schema activationcould help them read faster However, this current study still supported theirstudy in two ways: first, the females had a statistically similar level of readingcomprehension to the males; second, students faced some challenges withschema- basedactivitiesincludingdistraction,lackofEnglishlinguisticcompetenceandbac kgroundknowledge.

Insum,thefindingshavemetitsaimandhavefoundouttheanswersfortwo researchquestions,with threenull hypotheses supported.

Pedagogicalimplications

It cannot be denied that there has been a variety of research worldwideontheeffectsofschema- basedactivitiesonreadingcomprehension.Infact,thestudies on this prospect are considerably limited in the setting of Vietnam,especially in Khanh Hoa Province Therefore, it is anticipated to make somecontributionstotheuseofschema- basedactivitiesinlearningreadingcomprehension.

The findings of the research help to draw a consideration that schema- based activities have a slight impact on students’ reading comprehension,especiallyforstudentsinacenterinKhanhHoaprovince.Althoughthe resultsdonotshowasignificantdifferenceintermsofschemaactivationbetweenthetwo groups,itisacceptedthatstudentswhoareactivatedrelevantschemashaveperformedm o r e e f f e c t i v e l y t h a n t h o s e w h o a r e n o t T h e r e f o r e , i t i s h i g h l y recommended that besides reading skills, vocabulary and grammar, contentteachingshouldbeincluded.Furthermore,students’attitudestowardsapplyingsche ma-based activities in learning reading comprehension are highly positiveas it can increase their knowledge and motivation Thus, in pre- and post- readingstageitisnecessaryforteacherstoequipstudentswithasmuchcontentareaknowledge aspossiblesoasnottodisadvantagethemfromunderstandingthetextwhoseinformationm aybeunfamiliartothem.Inaddition,thefindingsof the study may recommend some experiences in designing reading activitieswhichstimulatestudents’mind,interestsandfeeling.Withabstractordifficultreading topics, teachers should use audiovisual aids such as videos, pictures,posters,mapsorotherconcretethings.Duringgroupdiscussion,ifpoorstudents takes a lot of time to express their understanding due to their limitedvocabulary and lack of confidence, it would be better if teachers can adjustthem The teacher are also suggested to analyze the curriculum, learners’language proficiency level in order to make a right choice of the type ofschema- basedactivities.Moreover,teachersneedtoconsiderpossibleproblemssuchasdistr action,toomanynewwords,etc.whenassigningschema-based activities With these implications, students will understandbetterinthereadingprocesswhen meeting theinformation again.

Limitationsofthestudy

It is necessary to acknowledge that the study still has several limitationsalthough ithasachieveditsobjectives.

Thefirstlimitationisthatthecurrentstudywasconductedinthenaturalsetting ofEnglish teaching at a center in Khanh Hoa Province, where theresearcherworked.As ar e su l t , itfailed toa d h e r e tor a n d om sampling.The participants came from two intact classes which were chosen at the beginningoftheschoolyear andpriortothe study.

What is more, the small sample size (N = 80) of this study does notpermit the researchertomake strong generalizationsabout the impact ofbackground knowledge on L2 reading comprehension Therefore, the studycouldnot achievegeneralized resultsto allhigh schoolEFLstudents.

Suggestionsforfurtherstudies

The limitations presented in the previous section may provide somesuggestionsforfurtherstudieswhichcanhelptofillinthegapsthisstudycouldnot fillin.

Firstly,oneofthelimitationsofthisstudyisbecauseofthesmallsizeofthesample. Asaresult,furtherstudiescanbeconductedtoinvestigatetheeffectofschema- basedactivitiesonEFLstudents’readingcomprehensionwithlargersizeofparticipantsan d choosingthemrandomly atthebeginning.

What is more, the current study placed emphasis on the use of schema- basedactivitiesinlearningreadingcomprehension.Itisvitaltoconductfurtherresearchtoexa minetheeffectofschema- basedactivitiesonlisteningcomprehension.Thisisbecausebothreadingandlisteni ngarereceptivelanguageskills,theeffectsofschema- basedactivitiesinlisteningcomprehension need to be proved to see whether they have the same results ornot.

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Part1.Lookatthetextineachquestion1-5.Whatdoesitsay?Circlethecorrect letterA,B,or C.

C Hannah onlywanta‘Fast Boys’ T-shirtifit’sapurpleone.

Part2 Theyoung peoplebelow allwanttodosomethingspecialthisSaturday. Therearedescriptionsofeightevents ontheoppositepage.

Decide which event would be the most suitable for the following people.Foreach question 6-10,mark thecorrectletter(A-H).

6 Angela wants to go out with her younger sister in the evening. Theyboth love learning about wildlife and would like to take part in an organizedactivity.

7 Vicwouldliketogowithhisfriendstolistentoseveraldifferentkindsofmusic.They alsowanttobe abletobuy somethingto eat.

8 Beth and her twin sister are interested in art and would like to makesomethingwhichtheycantakehomeasasouveniroftheirday.Theyalsowantanicep lacetoeattheir packedlunch.

9 Mike wants to spend the day with a couple of friends They all enjoywatersports andtheopen airandarealsokeen onhistory.

10 Mollyandherfriendareenjoyingaschoolprojectontheenvironment and are keen to discover more about this topic They want to gosomewherewheretheycan spendtheday andalsogetsomelunch.

Part 3 Look at the sentences below about a family trip to see dolphins.Readthetextbelowtodecideifeachsentence(11-20)iscorrectorincorrect.

Part 4 Read the text and questions below For each question 21-25, circlethe correctletter A,B,CorD.

Sleep is food for the brain During sleep, important body functions and brainactivity occur Skipping sleep can be harmful, even deadly, particularly if youarebehindthewheel.Youcanlookbad,youmayfeelmoody,andyouperformpoorly. Sleepiness can make it hard to get along with your family and friendsand hurt your scores on school exams Sleepiness can lead to aggressive orinappropriate behavior such as yelling at your friends or being impatient withyourteachersor familymembers.

Sleep is vital to your well-being, as important as the air you breathe, the wateryou drink and the food you eat It can even help you to eat better and managethestressof beingateenager.

Teenagers need about 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night to function best. Mostteensdonotgetenoughsleep:onestudyfoundthatonly15%reportedsleeping8 hours and a half on school nights Not getting enough sleep or having sleepdifficultiescanlimityourabilitytolearn,listen,concentrateandsolveproblems.

Teenstendtohaveirregularsleeppatternsacrosstheweek-theytypicallystayup late and sleep in late on the weekends, which can affect their biologicalclocks andhurtthequalityoftheir sleep.

Consuming caffeine close to bedtime can hurt your sleep, so avoid coffee,tea,soda and chocolate late in the day, and you can get to sleep at night Nicotineand alcoholwillalsointerferewithyoursleep.

A consistent sleep schedule will help you feel less tired since it allows yourbody to get in synchronization with its natural patterns You will find that it’seasiertofallasleep atbedtimewiththistype ofroutine.

A our scores at school may be low and the relationship with others becomesworse

D can lead to appropriate behaviors or being patient with your teachers orfamilymembers

Part 1 Look at the text in each question 1-5 What does it say? Circle thecorrect letterA,B,or C.

Part 2 The young people below all want to find a swimming club theycan join.

Decide which club would be the most suitable for the following people.Foreach question 6-10,mark thecorrectletter(A-H).

6 Ralph is a strong swimmer, and would like a club that organizedchallenginglong- distanceevents.He’dalsotoimprovehistechnique,butonlyhasweekendsfree.

7 Martahasjustlearnttoswimandwantstoimprovequicklysoshecanjump off the top board into a big pool She prefers indoor pools, but doesn’tlikedoingcompetitions.

8 Fiona wants a club where she can swim for pleasure and meet otherpeople She’d also like a club that organizes games in the pool, and regularsocial events.

9 Jaycan’tswimveryfaratthemoment,sohewantstogetstronger.Hecanonlyatte ndoneeveningperweek,sowouldlikeindividualinstruction.

10 Daisy wants to attend a swimming club after 6 p.m on Tuesday andThursday.Shewantstotakeswimmingtestsasshemovesupfromintermediateto advancedlevel,andhopestobecome awinner in clubraces.

12 AttheOcean Center,you can seefish frombothseasand rivers.

Part 4 Read the text and questions below For each question 21-25, circlethe correctletter A,B,CorD.

People believe in astrology because it offers many desirable things such asinformation andassuranceaboutthe future.

Astrologyclaimsthatnothinginlifeiscoincidentalandeverythingthatoccursto us happens for a particular reason Astrology can provide us some goodanswers as to why these things happen to us and it can also predict them inadvance In this way, astrology actually helps people to understand the worldaround them much better As practiced today, astrology can work quite well.Mostofthepeoplewhovisitastrologersorreadtheirhoroscopesregularlyendup feeling happy and satisfied This does not mean that the astrologers haveaccuratelypredictedtheindividuals’futurebasedontheirhoroscopedates,butit means that having a horoscope explained can be actually a very fulfillingexperience.

People enjoy reading their horoscope forecasts and this often leads to changesin personalities, behaviors and decision-making processes Astrology can be areal lifesaver because it lets you know of the future obstacles and problems inadvance.Itisuptoyouwhetheryouwanttobelievetheadviceandprecautionssuggestedi nahoroscopereadingandsaveyourselffromthepainwithoutdoingmuch.

Astrology takes into account two major aspects - our birth potential and theeffects of the planets and the stars on our personal horoscope It can help uschoose the right career and education path for us, in order to make a good andsuccessfullife.

Lastbutnotleast,webelieveinastrologybecauseit’saboutus.Myhoroscopeis like a blueprint of my life that got created precisely at the time I was born.Thatmeansthatmybirthchartisasuniqueasmyfingerprintsare.Eachplanet’splaceme ntinmyhoroscopecanrevealalotaboutmypersonalityanddestiny.

B theyhavehad t h e ir f u t ur e predicted a c c u r a t e l y based o n theirhoro scope dates

AN INVESTIGATION INTO STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES

YearsoflearningEnglish years Time for practicing reading a week (tick (√) before your choice)Lessthan1hourperweek Between 1 and 3 hours per weekMorethan3hoursper week

5 Talkinga b o u t what have been learnt from thereadingtext

Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree

6 I can now feel lessworriedbeforere ading.

7 Ithinkschema-based activities areinterestingandunderstand able.

8 Ifeelcuriousandintere stedinthereading text if I amprovidedwithknow ledgeaboutunfamiliart opics.

10 Schema- basedactivities increasemy interest instudying readingcomprehension.

11 Schema- basedactivitiesm a k e t h e classroomenvir onment moreenjoyableandless stressful.

12 I can read morequickly when studying withschemaactivation.

13 I can understandtheconte ntofthereadingtextbet terthanks to theactivation of mybackgroundknowle dge.

14 Schema activationenables me todetermineimportanti nformation of atext, and decidewhere to payattention.

15 Pre-reading stageincluding schema- baseda c t i v i t i e s i s more interestingand helpful thanvocabularyteachin g only.

17 I find schema- based activities useful in comprehendingre adingmaterials.

18 Schema- basedactivities provideme with real knowledgeandspec ificpurposeaboutwha tIamgoingtoread.

19 TheinformationIhav e alreadyknown help me inguessing the ones

20 Schema- basedactivities motivateme to do morereadingcompreh ensiontasks outside theclassroom.

21 Schema-based activitiesg i v e m e chancetopracticethin king andanalyzing.

22 In the readingprocess,I canu setextc l u e s a n d myactivated schemastom a k e i n f e r e n c e s thatg o b e y o n d t h e informationli terally stated inthetext.

23 Schema- basedactivitiesm a k e m e know more fromsharingideaswith my classmates.

24 Schema- basedactivitiescha llengemetoaskque stionstom y s e l f t o m a k e prediction aboutthetext.

25 Iw i l l t r y t o w i d e n myschemabecauseit helpsmealotin learning readingcomprehension.

PHIẾU KHẢO SÁT VỀ TRẢI NGHIỆM VÀ SUY NGHĨ CỦA HỌC

SINHĐỐIVỚICÁCHOẠT ĐỘNGHOẠTHÓA KIẾN THỨC NỀN

Học tiếngAnhđược: năm Thời gian luyện tập thêm kĩ năng đọc hiểu:Dưới1tiếngmỗi tuần Khoảng 1 đến 3 tiếng mỗi tuầnNhiều hơn3 tiếng mỗi tuần

B Đánhdấu(√)vàoô em lựa chọn:

1 Từng bạn chia sẻ ngắn gọnvới cả lớp

STT Hoànt oànđồ ngý Đồng ý

6 Em cảm thấy ít lo lắnghơn trước khi làm bàiđọc hiểu.

7 Em nghĩ các hoạt độngnàyrấtthúvịvàdễhi ểu.

8 Em cảm thấy hứng thúvà tò mò nếu em đượccungcấpthêmthông tinvềnhữngchủđềkhông quenthuộc.

10 Hoạt động này làm emhứngthúhơntrongviệc đọchiểu.

11 Hoạtđộnghoạthóakiến thức nền làm lớphọcthúvịhơnvàítcăn g thẳnghơn.

12 Em cảm thấy mình đọcnhanhhơnkhithamgiah oạtđộnghoạthóakiếnthức nền.

15 Hoạtđộnghoạthóakiến thức nền thú vị vàhữuíchhơnlàchỉđượcdạ y từvựngmới.

16 Em có thể nói về nộidungbàiđọcrõràngvàt ựtinhơn.

17 Hoạtđộnghoạthóakiến thức nền giúp emhiểu rõ nội dung trongtàiliệuđọc.

18 Hoạtđộngnàycungcấpt hêmkiếnthứcthực tế và định hướngrõràngtrướckhiem đọc hiểu.

19 Thôngtinemđượccung cấp trước khi đọcgiúpemđoáncácthông tin khác mà em khôngbiết.

21 Hoạtđộngnàygiúpemcó cơ hội suy nghĩ vàphân tích trước khi bắtđầu đọc bài.

22 Trongquátrìnhđọchiểu, emcóthểsửdụngnhững gợi ý từ bài đọcvà kiến thức vừa đượccung cấp để suy luậncác thông tin được ngụýtrongbàiđọc.

23 Hoạtđộnghoạthóakiến thức nền giúp embiếtnhiềuhơnnhờviệc chiasẻkiếnthứcvớibạnbè.

24 Hoạt động này làm emthử thách bản thân hơnvì em sẽ tự hỏi và dựđoántrướcnộid u n g bàiđọc.

25 Em sẽ cố gắng tự hoạthóakiếnthứcnềnvìn ógiúpemrấtnhiềutrongviệc đọchiểu.

1 Did you find schema-based activities useful for your readingcomprehension?

3 Cáchoạt độngnàycó giúp emcảithiệnhơntrongviệcđọchiểu không?

4 Emcó gặpkhókhăntrongkhi thamgiacác hoạt độngnàykhông?

T: Chào em, cám ơn em vì đã chấp nhận tham gia buổi phỏng vấn của cô. Cômuốn biết cảm nhận của em về các hoạt động hoạt hóa kiến thức nền trong kĩnăngđọc hiểu.Emthấysaovềhoạtđộngnày?Nócóhữu íchkhông?

S:Emthấyhữuíchlắm.Nhiềulúcemkhôngbiếtmìnhchuẩnbịđọcvềchủđềgì, có nhiều chủ đề bài đọc cũng lạ với em nữa Từ khi cô tổ chức hoạt độngnày thì em hình dung trước được nội dung bài đọc, em cảm thấy bài đọc ít lạlẫmhơná cô.

T: Thế à, em có thấy kĩ năng đọc của mình cải thiện hơn trong thời gian gầnđây không?

S: Cũngcó chút chútá cô,emthấyemđọc nhanh hơn,hiểunộidung hơn.

S: Thường thì trong tuần em không có thời gian rảnh vì còn phải học bài ởtrường với đi học thêm nên cuối tuần em hay giành thời gian luyện kĩ năngtiếng Anh.

S: Em chỉ chọn mấy bài đọc có tiêu đề giống như những gì mình học trên lớpđể đọc dễ dàng hơn, chứ mấy bài đọc nội dung lạ mà vốn từ em ít nên em haynản lắm.

S: Dạ em sẽ xem tin tức khi em lướt facebook hoặc đọc sách để có thêm kiếnthứcthựctế.

S: Dạ em khi em đọc bài đọc có từ nào mới em sẽ ghi chú lại để học, em cũngcó tham gia các nhóm học tiếng anh trên facebook, nếu có chủ đề nào gần gũithìemcũngsẽhọcthêm từvựngvềchủđềđó.

T:Côcũngmonghoạtđộngnàysẽgiúpemtiếnbộhơntrongviệchọcđọc.Emcó thíchcôtổchức các hoạtđộng nhưvậytrên lớpkhông?

S: Thích cô, mấy bạn xúm lại thảo luận vui lắm, mà có mấy bạn cứ tranh thủnói chuyệnriênglàmtụiemthấykhóchịu.

T:Thếemcó khó khăngì khi thamgiahoạtđộngnày trên lớpkhông?

S: Dạ đôi lúc thời gian thảo luận của tụi em hơi ngắn nên nhiều bạn chưa kịpchia sẻ.

S: Em cũng không chắc, mà em nghĩ nếu cô cho các nhóm thảo luận xong rồithi đuađưa raýkiến,nhómnàođúngnhiềuhơnthắngácô.

T: Cámơn emđãđóng gópý kiến cho cô nha.

T: Cám ơn em đã dành thời gian tham gia phỏng vấn Cô muốn tìm hiểu thêmvề cảm nhận của em về các hoạt động hoạt hóa kiến thức nền trong việc đọchiểu.Giờchúngta bắtđầunha.

T:Em thấynógiúpíchgìchoviệcđọc củaem?Vídụnhưlàemcóđọcnhanhhơn hayhiểubàiđọc rõ hơnkhông?.

S:Emthấytốcđộđọccủaemnhanhhơn,emcóthểđoánđượcýcủađoạnmặcdùcóvàitừmớ iemkhôngbiết,chắcdoemýthứcđượcemsẽđọcvềnộidunggì,bàiđọc đódạnggì,cáchlàm nhưthếnàonênemítbỡngỡ hơn.

S: Em thích lúc được cô cho xem video với xem tranh á, em hiểu các vấn đềthựctếnhanhvànhớlâuhơn.Cònlúcthảoluậnnữa,mấybạnchiasẻchonhaunhiềuýlắm. Lúcđótâmtrạngemcũngthoảimáihơn,khôngcóbịcăngthẳng.Với lạiemthấyembiếtthêmđượcnhiềuthứnữa.

T: Em có thích cô tổ chức các hoạt động này trước khi đọc không? Hay là chỉcầndạytừvựnglà em có thểhiểuđược bàiđọc rồi?

S: Em thấy có hoạt động này sẽ hay hơn đấy cô, hoạt động vui lắm.T:Khitham gia thìem có gặpkhókhăngìkhông?

S:Emthấycónhiềunguồntàiliệuđểemtựhoạthóakiếnthứcnền,emxemtivivới đọc tintrênmạng.Cònvềtừvựngthìemtựhọcquacáckênhyoutube.

T: Chào em Cám ơn em đã tham gia cuộc nói chuyện ngày hôm nay Mình sẽnói về chuyện áp dụng các hoạt động hoạt hóa kiến thức nền cho việc học đọchiểutiếngAnh.Em cứthẳngthắnnóiranhữngđiều mìnhcảmthấynha.

T: Một tuần emdànhbao lâuđểluyệntậpkĩnăngđọchiểutrong tiếngAnh?

T: Em thường luyện đọc vào thời gian nào trong tuần?

T: Em có thấy việc cô áp dụng các hoạt động hoạt hóa kiến thức nền trước khicho cảlớpđọc cóhữuíchkhông?