an investigation into the problems of reading skills among english majors

iii ABSTRACT The current research was carried out to investigate the problems of reading skills that English majors at Thu Dau Mot University have had/encountered, to examine whether stu

INTRODUCTION

Rationale

From the past till now, reading has been playing a very important role in our lives because it is a significant skill that helps us not only have access to new knowledge but also deepen our thoughts Moreover, this skill is seen as an important tool in every professional field around the world to be able to recognize, understand and comprehend written or printed materials, which helps the readers to get engaged with the world around them Let’s take an example of a man who has just been promoted from mechanic to manager in a big company It’s plain that this man is really good at fixing things because he has done the jobs a long time before However, when it comes to managing, this man has neither knowledge nor experience In this case, what should he do so that he can perform his new position As a natural response, he jumps into reading as many kinds of managing books as possible in the hope that he has basic knowledge about managing Moreover, he can deepen his understanding of all the aspects of managing a job through reading from famous and successful managers’ stories around the world Hence, through reading, we become more knowledgeable

More importantly, one of the most important elements and essential tools in English language learning is reading skill (Pandian, 1997; Mokatsi, 2005) because English learners are able to develop good writing style, an adequate vocabulary and advanced grammar and become excellent spellers through reading process (Krashen, 1993) In this regard, it is undeniable that reading skill is the master of all language learning skills because without it, one is considered having no intelligence and blind in language knowledge

Although reading is really necessary and important especially for those who learn English as foreign language or second language because it helps them build and expand their language knowledge, not all people can do well with reading because reading is an interactive process in which the writer and the reader dialog through a text (Ruiz, 2015)

As Barnett (1989, cited in Omaggio, 1993) defined, reading is seen as communication, as a mental process, as the reader’s active participation in the creation of meaning, and as a manipulation of strategies Moreover, Day and Bamford (2000) posited that reading is the construction of meaning from a printed or written message In addition, Pressley (2002) and Henderson and Buskist (2011) pointed out that readers are asked to be active while reading so that they have explicit aims related to the text, to look through the text before reading and while reading so that they can guess what is going to happen in the next session, to look through the passages and try to guess the meaning of words from the context, to use their background knowledge and check their understanding, to restructure the meaning, repeat it and question it, to think about the characters and events when reading fictional texts so that they tend to summarize informative texts, and to assume reading as a productive process Hence, reading requires the readers to not only read the text but also understand the writers

In keeping with this sense, the call for efficient reading skills is significant and is a necessity in most of the aspects in learning, since every aspect of the students’ academic life involves it Though many students have learned to read, Rutzler (2020) showed a disparity by stating that “the act of reading and the act of comprehending what you read are two very different things” In other words, not all the time do the readers comprehend all that they read in spite of the fact that their vocabulary is adequate and their grammar is wide As a matter of claim, this is actually a problem that the majority of students who learn English as a foreign language or second language around the world as a whole and in Vietnam in particular are identified as having problems with reading

In this regard, Thu Dau Mot University is not an exception

Indeed, as a first claim, most English majors at Thu Dau Mot University read without any particular strategies for remembering new words, getting the main ideas, getting the meaning by the context, recognizing and applying grammar or reading in discourse level Moreover, their limited knowledge of vocabulary and of sentence structure, inappropriate use of background knowledge, lack of reading fluency, failure to distinguish between different text structures, and difficulty making inferences all have a negative impact on their reading comprehension.Therefore, they do not comprehend what they are reading, and consequently they gain little information Unless students with these problems are helped to improve their understanding of a written text and overcome the problems they are facing through the utilization of appropriate solutions in early stages, they will continue to struggle with reading in their later years or even throughout their life In the long run, they gradually feel demotivated in learning and maybe decide to quit

Seeing this as a big problem, many researchers have conducted some research projects on this issue As summarized, previous research studies on reading skills have focused on several themes For instance, several studies have examined the difficulties in studying English reading skills (Tran, 2021; Thai, 2020; Bui, 2020; Tran, 2019) The findings indicated that students have difficulties in reading comprehension mainly because of their lack of vocabulary, limited grammar and inappropriate use of reading strategies However, as observed, difficulties and problems in reading comprehension that students at Thu Dau Mot University are facing and having are deficient

For these reasons, the researcher decided to carry out the thesis on “An investigation into the problems of reading skills among English majors: A case study at Thu Dau Mot University” This thesis is absolutely necessary because it is expected to provide more insights into the problems of reading skills among English majors at Thu Dau Mot University.

Objectives of the Study

Firstly, in order to help students better enhance their reading comprehension and tackle their problems of reading skills, this research aims at investigating the problems of reading skills that English majors at Thu Dau Mot University have had/encountered Secondly, in order for teachers to help improve their students’ reading skills, the research also aims to provide more insights into the problems whether the students’ demographics (gender, living areas, academic levels and favorite skills) affect their reading comprehension And finally, the research is to make some suggestions for

Research Questions

In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the following research questions are raised:

1) What problems of reading skills do English majors at Thu Dau Mot University have had/encountered?

2) Are there any significant differences in their problems of reading skills in terms of their demographics (gender, living areas, academic levels and favorite skills)?

Scope of the Study

First, this study is limited to the English language students at Thu Dau Mot University It is also limited to the period of implementation of the study which took place during the first semester of the academic year 2022-2023

Second, the primary focus the researcher shall maintain is on analyzing the problems of reading skills that students have in terms of six categories: 1) decoding and fluency, 2) linguistic knowledge, 3) reading strategies, 4) comprehension strategies, 5) reading motivation, 6) reading environments

Third, students’ demographics (gender, living areas, academic levels and favorite skills) are used as independent variables to check whether there are any significant differences in their problems of reading skills This analysis is then used as a basis for making some suggestions for students to deal with the problems of reading skills they have had, for teachers to teach reading comprehension more effectively, and for the Faculty of Foreign Languages at TDMU to upgrade the syllabus of reading subjects In this regard, the suggestions are solely for pedagogical purposes.

Significance of the Study

The current research is expected to make a small contribution to a fuller understanding of the identified problems in the reading comprehension and to fill a gap in the current research field Moreover, the findings of the study are expected to foster further research projects that will be focused on the limitation of the research field

The findings of the research are expected to be helpful for teachers of English, especially instructors who are in charge of the English program at Thu Dau Mot

University They can use the findings of the research as a basis for the appropriate teaching methods or strategies that may contribute to assisting their students in dealing with those problems In addition, the results of this study may contribute in helping English majors at Thu Dau Mot University recognize reading comprehension problems they currently have in order to improve their understanding of what they read Moreover, the results of the current research may provide the administrators with helpful data that could assist them to make curriculum decisions.

Overview of the Thesis

Chapter 1 “Introduction” starts with the background of the study It tells the readers why the current study is carried out as well as what achievements it hopefully contributes Particularly, the author provides the problems of reading skills that English Majors at Thu Dau Mot University have as the basis for this thesis decision Then, the objectives, research questions, scope and significance of the thesis are presented

Chapter 2 “Literature review” presents the author’s critical viewpoints on the theories about reading skills

Chapter 3 “Methodology” describes the methodology of the study In particular, it deals with research design, population and sampling, research instrument, data collection procedure, instrument validity and reliability, data analysis procedure, and research ethics

Chapter 4 “Findings and Discussions” presents all the identified problems of reading skills that English majors at Thu Dau Mot university are facing In each kind of problem of reading skills, the analysis is given as the basis for making suggestions

Chapter 5 “Conclusion, Suggestions, and Limitations” summarizes the research results, suggests some pedagogical suggestions, acknowledges several limitations, and offers suggestions for future research in the field of reading comprehension skills.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Definition of Reading and Reading Comprehension

Reading is an activity, using the eyes to recognize graphic symbols and letters, using the sound to convey to the listener, and using the mind to think and keep contents According to Grabe and Stoller (2002), reading is a process of getting the meaning of something written by interpreting its characters symbols It is also defined as a process of grasping full linguistic meaning in the new language through the symbol used to represent it (Grabe, 2009) Moreover, Harris (1962) said that “reading is the meaningful interpretation of printed or written verbal symbols which also involves sensing, perceiving, achieving meaning, learning and reacting in a variety of ways” (p 60)

In keeping with these definitions, reading involves at least two people: the writer and the reader The reader has to decode the writer’s words to understand his/her message and construct meaning from text Thus, it can be said that definitions of reading often go with the concept of understanding or comprehension A number of researchers such as Lipka and Siegel (2012), Russell (2013), and McLean (2014) emphasize that the main goal of reading is comprehension Reading without comprehension is pointless Grabe (2009) states that “reading is centrally a comprehending process” (p.14) Readers read to understand what is intended to be conveyed in writing

According to Yogurtcu (2013), “the process of reading comprehension provides a link between thinking, textual content, and the reader’s level of readiness, expectations and objectives of reading” (p 376) Reading comprehension from a psychological viewpoint as mentioned by Rivers (2000) is “a problem-solving behavior that actively involves the reader in the process of deriving and assigning meaning, drawing on contextual information” (p 70)

Thus, based on the definitions of reading and reading comprehension as described above, a conclusion can be drawn that reading is an activity of recognizing the written words in the reading text, requiring the understanding or comprehension of what the writer tries to convey in those words.

The Importance of Reading Comprehension

According to Pandian (1997) and Mokatsi (2005), one of the most important elements and essential tools in English language learning is reading skill because English learners are able to develop good writing style, a wide range of vocabulary and advanced grammar and become excellent spellers through reading process (Krashen, 1993) In this regard, it is undeniable that reading skill is the master of all language learning skills because without it, one is considered having no intelligence and blind in knowledge Moreover, it is also significant for students’ academic success (Azeroual, 2013) and has become essential in higher education (Najeeb, 2013) Reading is associated with academic success (Logan, Medford & Hughes, 2011; Dabarera, Renandya & Zhang, 2014) because a great deal of formal education depends upon being able to read with understanding (Hulme and Snowling, 2011) Consequently, reading efficiently in English has become a necessity for many people, especially EFL students Attarzadeh (2011) points out that reading in English enables people to receive the published information Similarly, Levine, Ferenz, and Reves (2000) state that the ability to read academic texts is considered one of the most important skills that university students of English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) need to acquire Some authors such as Nassaji (2011), Chen (2012) and Sidek (2012) point out that the reading skill is not only necessary for comprehension purposes and getting information but also for linguistic competence development

Although what have been discussed so far has emphasized the importance of reading comprehension, a large number of EFL students see reading as being less

English majors at Thu Dau Mot University have any problems in terms of their attitude towards the importance of reading comprehension.

Types of Reading

In the history of reading comprehension teaching, two approaches used in developing reading skills have been known as extensive and extensive reading It is believed that these two approaches can be beneficial, in one way or another, for improving students’ reading comprehension ability (Popescu, 2012; Attaprechakul, 2013; Alpatkein, 2006; Grabe, 2010; Huang, 2013; Bernhardt, 2010) For this reason, these two types of reading are reviewed in the current study

According to Grellet (2010), intensive reading is a type of reading activity in which readers read short texts in order to extract specific informationwith the aim of understanding not only what the text means, but also how the meaning is produced (Nuttall, 2005) Thus, intensive reading is very effective for the development of the reading skills of students (Nuttall, 2005), but usually involves approaching the text under the guidance of a teacher (Yazar, 2013) In this regard, teachers need to perform their roles flexibly in intensive reading activity (Harmer, 2002) This means that in order to organize a good intensive reading activity, the teacher should be a curricula organizer, an observer, a feedback organizer and a prompter In particular, as a curricula organizer, the teacher should tell students the purpose of their reading and give them clear instructions about how to achieve it and how long they have to do it If teachers don’t do that, they go into their classes without an obvious purpose for the text, which contributes to their students’ poor comprehension As an observer, the teacher should detect his/her students’ progress in reading and whether they are doing well individually and collectively As a feedback organizer, the teacher may ask the students to compare their answers in pairs The teacher can lead a feedback session to check whether the students have completed the task successfully As a prompter, the teacher can prompt the students to notice language features in the text they read, and then clarify ambiguity

It can be concluded that intensive reading is very effective for the development of the reading skills of students (Nuttall, 2005), but it becomes less effective because of some hindrances For example, the students only read if asked by their lecturers Outside of the classroom, the students rarely read, or even never read Moreover, according to Day and Park (2005), some drawbacks of intensive reading in reading class can be clearly summarized in three circumstances First, students have no willingness to read, or if they read they do it slowly and without enthusiasm In other words, students have almost no desire to read, even if they are reading, it is done very slowly and less enthusiastically Second, students come to the class with an uneasy feeling, and they quickly become bored of the reading lessons This means that students attend reading subjects with an uncomfortable mood, they are anxious, and very quickly get bored with reading class Third, students only read English written materials if they are asked by their lecturer; apart from that, they rarely read English texts

Thus, due to these drawbacks of intensive reading, the researcher of the current study tries to investigate whether English majors at Thu Dau Mot University have any problems with reading skills in terms of intensive reading or not

If, in intensive reading, readers read short texts in order to extract specific informationwith the aim of understanding not only what the text means (Grellet, 2010), in extensive reading, the readers read “large quantities of materials that are within learners’ linguistic competence” (Grabe & Stoller, 2002, p 21) and they read for general, for overall meaning, and for information at a reading text with enjoyment (Day

& Bamford, 2004) As a matter of application, extensive reading is seen as “an approach to reading pedagogy that encourages students to engage in a large amount of reading” (Yamashita, 2013, p 248) Moreover, extensive reading not only makes the students fluent readers, but also enables them to learn new words and expand their understanding of words they knew before

Thus, there are two reasons for organizing extensive reading in reading comprehension teaching The first reason is that extensive reading is “the easiest and most effective way of improving reading skills” (Nuttall, 2005, p 127) The second reason is that extensive reading not only provides “a favorable climate” for the students but also it serves as “a source of enjoyment” (Nuttall, 2005, p 127) As a result, students feel interested in reading, which helps them to acquire the desired progress in developing

Furthermore, in extensive reading, students can select the books and texts they are interested in because the purpose of extensive reading is to enjoy reading texts Besides, students do not have to answer questions on the texts they read, so they can read a great deal at their own pace Thus, extensive reading practice is one way of improving comprehension and increasing reading flexibility (Nassaji, 2003) Similarly, Chen, Chen, Chen, and Wey (2013, p 303) state that “extensive reading is relaxing, informal, and allows students to choose materials based on their English proficiency level and their interests”

Further benefit of extensive reading is students’ positive attitudes toward reading might increase As Sweet (2000) states that an “effective reading instruction can develop engaged readers who are knowledgeable, strategic, socially interactive, and motivated” (p.6) Moreover, Sheu (2003) found that “… students were happy to be involved in the extensive program, neither their views on learning English, nor their attitudes toward reading were improved” (p.221)

However, that each reader has his/herown purpose for reading is a big drawback to extensive reading So, the number of students in a classroom can also become an obstacle in implementing extensive reading because it will be difficult to handle a big number of students as every student might have a wide range of topics in their mind To minimize the various topics of reading materials, teachers can provide particular reading materials to be chosen by students every week Similarly, the lack of reading materials which are suitable with students’ level is also the limitation of extensive reading because not all schools can provide English reading materials which are suitable with students’ level, together with a variety of reading materials on a wide range of topics To overcome it, for the orientation of extensive reading, teachers can provide reading materials for the students, but sometimes some of their students feel uninterested in Finally, there is no test which is also the limitation of extensive reading To evaluate and keep track of students’ reading progress, teachers can offer follow-up activity after reading (Day & Bamford, 2004)

Hence, due to these drawbacks of extensive reading, the researcher of the current study tries to investigate whether English majors at Thu Dau Mot University have any problems with reading skills in terms of extensive reading or not.

Modes of Reading

As a matter of fact, reading is an activity that students often perform either aloud or silently, depending on their learning styles Thus, in terms of term, those two modes of reading are called oral reading and silent reading

As the name of this mode of reading tells us, oral reading refers to students reading the texts with sound Sofyan, Wahid, and Idris (2021) state that through reading aloud strategy, students’ competence in understanding, analyzing, and interpreting the text will be improved Moreover, the students feel more comfortable in reading activity and motivated to elaborate more on their pronunciation competence and self-confidence This means that reading aloud makes the atmosphere of the class and students enjoyable in the teaching and learning activity In addition to those benefits, having oral reading fluency is a strong predictor of reading comprehension (Turkyılmaz, Can, Yildirim, & Ates, 2014) Reading aloud helps in analyzing the mistakes readers make but it is not the normal way in which people read (Anderson, 2008)

However, Wyatt (2014) claims that reading aloud in English classes is time- consuming and not effective Similarly, Nuttall (2005) stresses that overdoing the practice of getting language learners to read aloud around the class is dreary, demotivating and useless, unless it is done in order to help inadequate readers to read in groups or to round off work on a text Moreover, Grabe and Stoller (2002) suggest that when reading aloud, readers must focus on every word, which may cause slow reading speed and impede reading comprehension

Different from oral reading, silent reading refers to students reading the texts without sound In terms of benefits, silent reading is a reading skill that all readers need (Nuttall, 2005), the primary reading mode for proficient readers (Boer, Bergen, & Jong, 2014), and should be promoted in class (Kim, Wagner, & Foster, 2011); however, they also warn that students may pretend to be engaged in reading while they are not In addition, when teachers ask the class to read a text silently, the faster students might become bored and restless as they finish long before the slower ones (Nuttall, 2005) been deeply criticized because of the lack of teacher’s guidance about how students can select challenging texts appropriately; poor control of the time allocated for reading practice; little or no teacher interaction with students around reading texts; no feedback to students about the quality and quantity of their reading; and no student responsibility, purposes, or goals for the time spent in reading practice (Reutzel, Jones, Fawson, & Smith, 2008)

2.4.3 Comparison of Oral Reading and Silent Reading

What has been discussed in section 2.4 shows that both modes of reading have advantages and disadvantages But, is silent reading more advantageous than reading aloud? In fact, it is hard to conclude whether silent reading is more advantageous than reading aloud or not This is because Prior, Fenwick, Saunders, Ouellette, O’Quinn, and Harvey (2011) advise that both oral reading (reading aloud) and silent reading should be used in reading activities to facilitate comprehension because in fact, if any single reading practice is used exclusively over long periods of time, it tends toward tedium for both students and teachers (Reutzel, Jones, Fawson, & Smith, 2008) Therefore, which of both reading modes should be used in reading activities depends on how much it helps the readers comprehend what they read

In this regard, the researcher of the current study decides to investigate whether students have any problems related to reading modes or not by comparing the reading mode the teachers in Faculty of Foreign Languages at Thu Dau Mot University often use in class and the reading mode the students perform with the highest comprehension

According to Johnson (2001), there are three major reading comprehension approaches that the readers can use to manage and facilitate their comprehension process, as well as better understanding a written passage and overcoming their reading comprehension difficulties These approaches are the bottom-up approach, the top-down approach, and the interactive approach These three approaches differ from one another based on the procedure that readers follow in order to obtain meaning from a written passage For example, the bottom-up approach requires readers to decode each word in the text in order to gain meaning while the top-down one emphasizes the role that both the reader’s background knowledge and previous experience about the given topic play in obtaining meaning from the text However, the interactive approach looks at the reading process as an activity that requires engaging in two interactions Johnson (2001) suggests that these three approaches are important and realistic because of their advantages Below are their brief descriptions:

The bottom-up approach views reading as a process of decoding written symbols into aural equivalents According to this approach, a reader decodes to translate letters into sounds, then blends these letters and sounds into words and puts words together into sentences and finally builds up the text and its meaning Thus, the bottom-up is called “data-driven”, “outside the head” or “phonics approach”

According to Frank Smith (1978) in his book, he presented a “psycholinguistic” approach to reading He pointed out that the phonics approach simply does not work Smith developed an alternative called top-down approach This is also viewed as the

“inside-out”, “conceptually driven”, “inside the head” or “psycholinguistic approach”

It suggests that the meaning of the text exists in the reader’s mind and not in the text itself Hence, it emphasizes the reconstruction of meanings rather than the decoding of the forms

Stanovich (1980), Nunan (1999) proposed a mixture of the two approaches, both bottom-up and top-down approaches, called an interactive approach to reading This approach suggests that meaning exists in the head of the reader and also in the text; therefore, the reader can combine both the printed information and their knowledge about the world to comprehend the text Furthermore, to Nunan (1995), readers can use their knowledge of the content of the text as well as the knowledge of the text structure to reconstruct the writer’s original communicative in writing the text

Thus, it can be concluded that which approach might be appropriate depends on the type and size of the text, the capability of the class, as well as students’ needs, the purpose of reading and the time allotted

In reading, it can be said that comprehension, the purpose of reading, is a complex process because it requires the readers to have the ability to understand not only what is written in the text but also what is behind the text It is, therefore, true that the readers understanding because researchers such as Grabe and Stoller (2002), Machado (2010) and Karasakaloglu (2012) emphasize that without reading strategies, learners will struggle and continually focus on decoding letters and words instead of focusing on meaning and understanding Thus, a successful and efficient reader is a reader that can use all or most of the reading comprehension strategies

According to Harmer (2002), strategies for reading comprehension consist of: predicting, guessing word meaning, reading for specific information, scanning, skimming, reading for general comprehension, inferring from texts, interpreting texts, surveying text organization, and critically evaluating texts In addition to this list of reading comprehension strategies, Madhumathi and Ghosh (2012) suggest other reading strategies such as: using mental images, envisaging, asking questions and monitoring comprehension From this, there are many strategies for the readers to use in comprehending the text, but should they use all, most, some, or just one of these strategies to comprehend the text? In fact, it is hard to answer this question However, Anderson (2008) suggests that the readers should use different strategies for different text types; for example, the readers use skimming and scanning while reading the orientated texts like newspapers and messages, or they use inferring, guessing and interpreting while reading to evaluate literary texts Below are two commonly used sets of reading comprehension strategies that are noted by different linguists:

In reading, cognitive strategies are directly related to the readers’ target language and world of knowledge, which allow them to construct meaning from text and to perform the given task These strategies assist and guide the students to understand the reading content through skimming, scanning, analyzing and summarizing They also include the use of the readers’ first language to produce ideas In addition, cognitive strategies are connected with comprehending strategies (i.e., using dictionary, translating, predicting, inferencing (using context clues to ascertain the meaning)), memory strategies (i.e., underlining and highlighting information, visualizing read information) and retrieval strategies (i.e., previewing text before reading, recognizing text organization, using prior knowledge) (Semtin & Maniam, 2015) Below is a review of key cognitive strategies

Reading Comprehension Strategies

In reading, it can be said that comprehension, the purpose of reading, is a complex process because it requires the readers to have the ability to understand not only what is written in the text but also what is behind the text It is, therefore, true that the readers understanding because researchers such as Grabe and Stoller (2002), Machado (2010) and Karasakaloglu (2012) emphasize that without reading strategies, learners will struggle and continually focus on decoding letters and words instead of focusing on meaning and understanding Thus, a successful and efficient reader is a reader that can use all or most of the reading comprehension strategies

According to Harmer (2002), strategies for reading comprehension consist of: predicting, guessing word meaning, reading for specific information, scanning, skimming, reading for general comprehension, inferring from texts, interpreting texts, surveying text organization, and critically evaluating texts In addition to this list of reading comprehension strategies, Madhumathi and Ghosh (2012) suggest other reading strategies such as: using mental images, envisaging, asking questions and monitoring comprehension From this, there are many strategies for the readers to use in comprehending the text, but should they use all, most, some, or just one of these strategies to comprehend the text? In fact, it is hard to answer this question However, Anderson (2008) suggests that the readers should use different strategies for different text types; for example, the readers use skimming and scanning while reading the orientated texts like newspapers and messages, or they use inferring, guessing and interpreting while reading to evaluate literary texts Below are two commonly used sets of reading comprehension strategies that are noted by different linguists:

In reading, cognitive strategies are directly related to the readers’ target language and world of knowledge, which allow them to construct meaning from text and to perform the given task These strategies assist and guide the students to understand the reading content through skimming, scanning, analyzing and summarizing They also include the use of the readers’ first language to produce ideas In addition, cognitive strategies are connected with comprehending strategies (i.e., using dictionary, translating, predicting, inferencing (using context clues to ascertain the meaning)), memory strategies (i.e., underlining and highlighting information, visualizing read information) and retrieval strategies (i.e., previewing text before reading, recognizing text organization, using prior knowledge) (Semtin & Maniam, 2015) Below is a review of key cognitive strategies

Nuttall (2005) defines skimming as “glancing rapidly through a text to determine its gist” (p 49) In keeping with this definition, skimming is a reading technique helping the readers easily find out general information or main points by first looking through the introduction or conclusion paragraph or the topic sentence in each paragraph In this response, skimming helps people save time when they read for general information Besides, skimming seems to be an important skill for reading comprehension because it facilitates getting a general understanding of the text quickly (Grabe & Stoller, 2002)

Different from skimming, scanning is a reading technique used to look for specific information in a text (Patesan, Balagiu, Zechia, & Alibec, 2014) According to Nuttall (2005), scanning is “glancing rapidly through a text either to search for a specific piece of information (e.g a name, a date) … or to get an initial impression of whether the text is suitable for a given purpose” (p 49) It involves looking for specific words/phrases, figures, names or dates of a particular event When a reader is good at scanning, it will be easy for him/her to dismiss any unneeded information, which saves time and effort Scanning appears to be easier to apply than some other reading skills and it can help students to pass their exams but it does not guarantee full understanding of a text

According to Ahmadi and Ismail (2012), predicting is a technique of making assumptions that are related to the writer’s message by making the connection among their background knowledge, new information from the passage, and the passage’s construction As Nuttall (2005) points out, prediction involves activating readers’ schemata and thinking along with the writer by using their own experience This means that prediction occurs when the readers bring their own knowledge and experience to the text, which makes it easy and smooth for them to make out the meaning of the text Johnson (2001) also points out that the previous knowledge or experience of a reader helps them to predict what the writer is going to say next Moreover, Grellet (2010) indicates that using grammatical, lexical and cultural clues also helps readers predict

According to Nuttall (2005), a successful reader depends largely on prediction because he/she does not have to go through each and every line in the text She also points out that prediction often begins with the title of a text and continues throughout the whole process of reading As a matter of the dark side, sometimes prediction may be wrong, yet it makes the reader think about the topic as prediction is useful even when it is not successful (Nuttall, 2005) Efficient readers always depend on their ability to predict what comes next They use minimum clues from the text in order to reach the appropriate meaning of the text As a matter of practice, Grellet (2010) and Cuperman (2014) suggest that teachers should make their students think about the topic, use key words of the text and ask themselves questions about the various ways the text may develop When it is applicable, using pictures is one way to help students predict what is coming next (Harmer, 2002) On the other hand, Johnson (2001) suggests that using cloze exercises, in which learners are given a text with some words missing, can help learners develop predictive skills Therefore, from the viewpoint of the researcher of the current study, prediction is considered as a warm-up activity that can be easily enhanced by teachers It works really well in engaging the students in the reading activity This means that the students will be more interested in reading to check whether their prediction is right or wrong

It can be said that inferencing is an important technique in reading comprehension because it helps make assumptions and logical deductions from concrete ideas (Cuperman, 2014) This technique is needed when a text does not state something directly and then it is the reader’s responsibility to infer this information Thus, inferencing is linked to the process of reconstructing the writer’s unstated ideas Readers can make use of syntactic, logical and cultural clues to discover the meaning of these unknown elements (Grellet, 2010) Accordingly, the purpose of inferencing is to help readers to fill in the gaps in information and go beyond the literal meaning of words in a text to create a fully comprehensive image (Hogan, Bridges, Justice, & Cain, 2011)

In addition, Nuttall (2005) indicates that readers can use their inferencing skills to draw a certain conclusion from facts or points in an argument, etc that a text mentions

However, as Snowling and Hulme (2005) point out, it is difficult for readers to make inferences while reading if their comprehension is limited

In order to enhance students’ inferencing skill in reading class, teachers should use key or clue words and raise inferential questions Four factors that can help learners in inferencing are: knowledge of word meaning, drawing inferences from the content, finding answers to questions answered explicitly or in paraphrase in the passage and weaving together ideas in the content, and drawing inferences about the meaning of a word from context (Hudson, 2007) However, the most important thing should be noted that inferencing is not necessarily a certainty It is about probabilities But these possibilities may gradually turn into certainties when the reader meets a word more frequently and understands it more explicitly According to Nuttall (2005), inferencing affects the interpretation of a text to a large extent, helps the students to read texts more quickly and makes reading more enjoyable because of its problem-solving character which appeals to most people and which challenges students to make use of their intelligence In order to infer a piece of information from a given text effectively, students should make use of common sense, power of reasoning, knowledge of the world and other cultures However, cultural differences should be taught to students to avoid mis-inferencing

Previewing is defined as “a pre-reading activity that introduces students to key features of a text” (Grabe & Stoller, 2002, p 263) Through previewing, students can establish their expectations about what and how information is organized If the reader wants to find out where the information is from, he/she should use this quick technique (Grellet, 2010) This technique requires the reader to read the title of a text, the table of contents, the index, the appendix, the preface of the author or publisher, headings or subtitles of chapters and paragraphs, information in the back cover, abstracts of journal articles, acknowledgement etc (Gavin, Fairbairn, & Fairbairn, 2001) Thus, this useful skill saves students time in leading them towards intended and specific information that they look for For example, instead of spending a long time reading a whole book to locate specific information, the students can check the table of contents or the text on

Recognizing text organization is also an important reading technique for successful readers because through the internal structure of sentences and texts, they may predict the likely values of sentences and in turn interpret difficult texts According to Lo, Yeh, and Sung (2013, p 413), text structure “refers to the way the writers organize information in text” which is classified into two types: content information and structural information To construct the meaning of content information, the readers can use structural information Thus, knowledge of text structure is important for comprehension (Hudson, 2007; Cain, 2010) The identification of how the text and ideas are organized makes it easier to interpret difficult sentences (Nuttall, 2005) In other words, a reading text will probably be like a puzzle to the readers who are unable to recognize how it is organized and how the ideas in a text are structured

In order to recognize text organization, the readers must identify cohesive ties in the text because according to Mobalegh and Saljooghian (2012), cohesion is one of the aspects that show how well-organized a passage is Five kinds of cohesive ties identified by them include: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion Reference means interpreting something in a text by referring to something else; substitution is replacing an item by another; ellipsis is omitting an item which is not key in a text; conjunctions are devices that express certain meanings; and lexical cohesion is related to selecting vocabulary Thus, readers’ consistency of thinking and knowledge of text structure and organization are helpful in facilitating their reading comprehension

In reading, Semtin and Maniam (2015) describe the metacognitive strategy as a technique that requires “planning for learning, thinking about the learning process that takes place, monitoring one’s comprehension, and evaluating learning after completion of a task” (p 55) Thus, metacognitive strategies can facilitate students’ reading comprehension (Ahmadi, Ismail, & Abdullah, 2013) and enable them to cope with the reading difficulties encountered and make necessary adjustments (Dabarera, Renandya,

& Zhang, 2014) In other words, metacognitive strategies direct the ways readers arrange their interaction with the text and what strategies to use to achieve effective reading comprehension (Ahmadi et al., 2013) Moreover, these metacognitive strategies assist the language teachers to better understand their students’ different reading styles and identify the most impactful reading strategies to be taught in the language classroom

From what has been discussed above, it can be concluded that metacognitive reading strategies are crucial in facilitating students’ reading comprehension and improving students’ reading skills But, the teachers must take responsibility to enhance their students’ reading strategies because when students are not good enough at reading skills, teachers should teach them how to use meta-cognitive strategies effectively in order to avoid focusing only on words rather than the meaning of the whole text (Ahmadi

Factors Affecting Reading Comprehension Skills

Since reading comprehension is a complex process involving recognizing the written words and making the meaning of those words (Dennis, 2008; Block, 2004; Graves, Juel, & Graves, 1998), this process is often affected by some factors, including: complexity of the reading text, environmental influences, anxiety during reading comprehension, interest and motivation, and decoding or word recognition speed

In terms of the complexity of the reading text, Dennis (2008) pointed out that the readers’ strength and fluency in language affect their comprehending of the reading text The reason why Dennis (2008) links the complexity of the reading text to the readers’ strength and fluency in language is that if the readers know all of the vocabulary as well as grammatical points in the text, it becomes easier for them to understand the reading text In this explanation, the complexity of the text is low

Dennis (2008) found out that the environmental conditions also have a considerable impact on the learners who try to read a passage In particular, the readers may have a lot more problems understanding a text in an unorganized environment than those who read in a calm and controlled place If learners are in an unsafe place, they find it difficult to focus on their reading When they are in safe environments, their reading comprehension ability will be better Additionally, readers will lose their concentration in understanding a text when there are noises like televisions or radios

The third factor affecting reading comprehension that Dennis (2008) found out in his research project is related to the readers’ anxiety while reading In particular, readers have more pressure on reading if they read in examinations, class work, or homework situations while they get more excited if they read for enjoyment Even worse, some learners react positively to examinations while others are overwhelmed by the pressure to carry out a reading activity As a result, readers who experience anxiety while reading may not completely understand the reading text

Similarly, the readers’ interest and motivation are very important in developing their reading comprehension skill (Dennis, 2008) If readers find the reading material

This can lead to a lowering of reading comprehension among readers If the reading material is interesting for the readers, they can easily understand it and can remember it clearly Hence, EFL teachers should motivate their learners through providing interesting reading materials during their class time

More importantly, decoding or word recognition speed was acknowledged to be one of the causes of poor reading comprehension (Dennis, 2008) This means that readers who have problems in decoding and recognizing words read slowly and find it more difficult to understand the meaning of passages than those without decoding problems This factor is related to lexical processing which is a sequence of processes in which the readers recognize and access the meanings of word forms in a text (Tily, Fedorenko, & Gibson, 2010) In order to gain automatic access to words and their meanings, processing has to be practiced to a point that the lexical information contained in words takes less cognitive attention as it is easily recognized at surface (Hill, 2011) Therefore, many researchers support training learners to become automatic in word recognition to increase fluency (Chang, 2010), as automatic word recognition is crucial to fluent L2 reading comprehension (Grabe, 2010)

Thus, the researcher of the current study tries to investigate whether English majors at Thu Dau Mot University have any problems in terms of their awareness of the factors affecting reading comprehension skills.

Previous Studies

Because reading is an important skill for all language learners, especially learners of English, it is one of the compulsory subjects in all schools However, this skill becomes difficult for many learners because it requires learners to come up with appropriate reading strategies in order to comprehend the text As a result, English learners face a lot of problems with reading skills while they learn reading skills For these reasons, there have been a lot of studies done on reading comprehension problems

In 2018, Satriani conducted a research entitled “Reading Comprehension Difficulties

Encountered by English Students of Islamic University of Riau” to investigate difficulties in reading English skills The author carried out the study through a mixed method using questionnaire and interview guides The author found that most of the student’s difficulties in reading comprehension are that students have no motivation to form reading habits, have poor reading skills, and have poor vocabulary and grammar With the research aims set by the author, he succeeded in uncovering the difficulties, pointing out the shortcomings faced by the students, and raising their awareness However, proposals to solve the problem have not been specified The study only recommends that students should acquire adequate vocabulary and know how to use it correctly in context to overcome their difficulties But how they should practice, the author has not mentioned This deficiency can be considered as a reason to do further research into the problems of reading skills

In 2021, Al-Ghazo and Al-Sobh conducted research investigating the reading comprehension problems encountered by students of Ajloun National University Data from 20 EFL students (10 males & 10 females) from the Department of English Language and Literature at Ajloun National University indicate that students have high estimation to certain problems they encounter in reading comprehension as a result of the complexity of the texts, anxiety, and word recognition (decoding) The findings of the study also revealed that there were statistically significant differences between male and female students in their reading comprehension challenges in favor of female students

Similarly, in Vietnam, there has been a lot of research conducted on reading skills because students from different regions in Vietnam have different difficulties in reading

Of the recent studies, a research entitled “The difficulties in ESP reading comprehension encountered by English-majored students” was done by Tran and Duong in 2018 to explore difficulties of ESP (English for specific purposes) reading comprehension faced by English-majored students at one university in Vietnam The study was done with the participation of 80 English-majored students who were involved in answering a close- ended questionnaire, and three ESP teachers who were invited to participate in a semi- structured interview The findings showed that students did not have much trouble in dealing with reading ESP texts; nonetheless, it was sometimes seen that two common areas of difficulties in ESP reading comprehension students were faced with were revealed that students did not confront much with difficulties of text coverage, organization structure, and grammar used in ESP reading texts

Another study on reading comprehension was done by Nguyen and Kim (2021), entitled “Difficulties in reading comprehension of English majored sophomores at Tay

Do university, Cantho, Vietnam” This study surveyed the difficulties of sophomores in reading, helping students find their problems and solve them After collecting and analyzing the data collected by questionnaire and interview, the results point out three main factors that affect students’ reading comprehension, including: linguistic knowledge, lack of reading strategies, and psychological effect To help students overcome their difficulties in reading skills, the researcher recommends two ways: first, students must know the problems they are facing; second, they should follow the teacher’s instructions as well as improve their language, strategy, and motivation skills

Also, in 2021, Nguyen carried out a study investigating what difficulties in reading comprehension that the first-year English majors encounter and what the most common difficulties they face Data from 126 first-year English majors at a public university in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam revealed that lack of background knowledge, inadequate vocabulary, time pressure and inappropriate use of strategies are the four most popular factors causing reading comprehension difficulties By contrast, the findings reveal that the participants could deal with grammatical structures of the reading texts and have no problem in understanding them The findings of the study are a good source of information helping students to recognize their own reading comprehension difficulties

From these two studies on reading comprehension, it can be seen that these studies focus much on finding out difficulties in or problems about reading comprehension that students have However, the researchers of these studies haven’t clarified whether there is any relationship between student’s demographics (gender, academic level, living region, etc.) and their reading comprehension problems or difficulties Recognizing this as a researcher gap, the researcher of the current study will focus the research aims on filling this research gap to provide a clearer picture of reading comprehension problems or difficulties in Vietnam.

METHODOLOGY

Research Design

To achieve the research objectives as declared in Section 1.2, this research was done through quantitative and qualitative approach, also called mixed method Quantitative approach was considered the appropriate method for this research because it helps generalize the research problem being studied by numeric data collected from a large group of population (Dửrnyei, 2007; Snape & Spencer, 2003) In this regard, through the quantitative approach, the findings of the current research are expected to be reliable in terms of research methodology Moreover, the qualitative method gives more convincing value to the data from the quantitative method

To get the quantitative data for the study, the researcher conducted a survey through questionnaires for students and teachers to find out and generalize the reading comprehension problems that English majors at Thu Dau Mot University are facing As Griffee (2012) stated that questionnaire is a data collection instrument used to get data

“in a relatively short period of time” (p.55) and from a large group of participants So, conducting a survey through a questionnaire was an effective way to reach the current study’s purposes To get qualitative data, the researcher interviewed students and teachers to get more insights into the issue under investigation.

Population and Sampling

As Hartas (2010) stated, a population is a group of individuals that share the same characteristic that is of interest to a study In keeping with this sense, to fully generalize the being-studied problems of reading skills, first of all, participants in this study are students who are doing a bachelor’s degree in the English language at Thu Dau Mot studied over 4 years at TDMU They are chosen as participants in this study because they are learning, have been learning, learned and are truly doing reading comprehension during their academic life at university At the same time, in order to be able to draw a clearer picture of the reading comprehension problems that these students are facing, teachers of the English program at Thu Dau Mot university are also chosen to participate in this research Therefore, the respondents in this study can be categorized under two types of groups: students and lecturers who are invited to answer two different questionnaires

As provided from the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Thu Dau Mot University, the number of English majors at the faculty is around 500 students and the number of freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors is approximately equal among groups Similarly, the number of teachers of the English program at Thu Dau Mot university is

With the limitations on the implementation time of the study and conditions to meet the students, the researcher chose randomly a sample of 222 students who are from freshmen to seniors to collect data from them The sample size that the researcher chose was based on the size of the phenomenon that the researcher is trying to investigate, the number of the subgroups of the population, the heterogeneity of the population, and the degree of precision to be estimated (Bernard, 2013) Moreover, sampling must ensure validity and reliability of the study Thus, the sample of 222 students was calculated by using Yamane’s (1967) formula:

According to Yamane (1967), n is the sample size, N is the population size, and e is the level of precision, sometimes called sampling error Therefore, when this formula is applied to calculate the sample size from the population size of 500 students, the result came out as follow:

Figure 3.2 Student sample size calculated by Yamane’s (1967) formula

In terms of statistics, 222 students were adequately representative of the student population of the current study However, all of the English majors of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Thu Dau Mot University were invited to answer the questionnaire for students Therefore, 500 questionnaires were distributed Within 20 days, from September 8 th , 2022 to September 28 th , 2022, 206 questionnaires were returned, but 77 of them were invalid because they did not satisfy the criteria for reliability checking, as stated in section 3.4.2.1 Therefore, the data from 129 valid questionnaires were used and analyzed for the current study Although the number of valid questionnaires failed to reach the expected sample size, after calculated by using Yamane’s (1967) formula, the level of precision that the survey results reflect the views from the overall population is still more than 92%; equivalently, sampling error is less than 8% (see Figure 3.3.) This means that if 60% of the sample’s responses are “A” with a sampling error of 8%, 52% (`%-8%) and 68% (`%+8%) of the general population think that the answer is “A”

Figure 3.3 Sampling error in student sample size calculated by Yamane’s formula

In contrast, because the group of teachers is small, all of the 22 lecturers in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Thu Dau Mot University were invited to take part in the survey After 14 days of data collection, all 22 lecturers did answer the questionnaire for the teacher, but three of them were invalid because they did not satisfy the criteria for reliability checking, as stated in section 3.4.2.2 Therefore, the data from 19 valid questionnaires were used and analyzed for the current study Although the number of valid questionnaires failed to reach the expected sample size, after calculated by using Yamane’s (1967) formula, the level of precision that the survey results reflect the views from the overall population is around 92%; equivalently, sampling error is around 8%

Despite not reaching the expected sampling error of 5%, the sampling error of 8% in student sample size and one of 8% in teacher sample size are estimated to be enough to reflect the views from the overall population because they fall between 4% and 8% which are considered acceptable by most survey researchers (Zoho Survey, 2019; Pollfish, 2022; Voxco, 2022) Therefore, in conclusion, the data from 129 valid questionnaires collected from students and 19 valid questionnaires collected from teachers were used and analyzed for the current study.

Research Instrument

Dawson (2009) divides questionnaires into three types: closed-ended, open- ended, or semi-structured The first type, closed-ended questionnaires following a set format with boxes to tick or scales to rank, is used to generate statistics in quantitative research Great numbers can be produced from this type of questionnaire because of the ease of analysis The second type, open-ended questionnaires consisting of a set of questions with a blank section for participants to write their answers, is mainly used in qualitative research And, the third type, semi-structured questionnaires, is used by some researchers Such questionnaires start with a series of closed questions and finish with a section of open questions for more detailed responses

Out of them, this study used the closed-ended questionnaire as a quantitative data collection instrument from the students because, according to Kumar (2014), using closed-ended questions in a questionnaire helps to ensure that the data required by the researcher is obtained and the responses are easier to analyze In addition, closed-ended questions are easier and quicker to complete and may enhance the comparability of answers and clarify the meaning of a question for respondents (Bryman, 2012) Therefore, through the responses of the participating students, some of the current problems that English majors in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Thu Dau Mot University are facing in reading comprehension can be figured out

In terms of classification, the questions in the student questionnaire of this study were classified on the basis of Dửrnyei’s (2011) classification of data that questionnaires can produce, including: factual questions which are used to find out certain facts about the respondents such as demographic characteristics; behavioral questions which are used to find out what the respondents are doing or have done in the past; and attitudinal questions which are used to find out what people think, covering attitudes, opinions, beliefs, interests, and values

In particular, the student questionnaire was divided into nine parts (see Appendix 1) Part One (8 multiple-choice items) seeks some demographic data about respondents including: their gender, living place, family economics status, academic levels, favorite skills, and English proficiency level Part Two (5 Likert-type items) tries to investigate the attitudes of students towards reading comprehension Part Three (8 Likert-type items) tries to check students’ opinions about the factors affecting reading comprehension Part Four (7 Likert-type items) is related to students’problems about decoding and fluency Part Five (15 Likert-type items) is to find out students’ problems about linguistic knowledge Part Six (1 multiple-choice item) is to uncover students’ problems about reading strategies Part Seven (8 Likert-type items) makes clear about students’ problems about comprehension strategies Part Eight (8 Likert-type items) is to investigate students’ problems with the reading motivation Part Nine (10 multiple- choice items) is to recognize students’ problems about reading environment

For Likert-type items in the questionnaire, they have a five-point scale, ranging from (1) “strongly disagree” to (5) “strongly agree” for the respondents to choose from The five-point Likert scale were chosen because some of its strengths were taken into consideration, including: it is simple to construct, likely to produce a highly reliable scale, easy to read and complete for participants, it is a universally used method of collecting data, and it is easy to understand and code them (Bertram, 2007) For multiple-choice items, the respondents can choose one or more than one option

For the teacher questionnaire, it was used to reinforce some data collected from the student questionnaire, to find out whether teachers’ teaching methods contribute to the students’ problems of reading skills, and to get the teachers’ advice on what the students should improve In this regard, the teacher questionnaire (see Appendix 2), composed of eight closed-ended items and five semi-structured items, was divided into information The second section (items 5-7) dealt with the participants’ observation about their students’ reading The third section (items 8-12) was related to the participants’ teaching methods Finally, in the fourth section (item 13), the participants were asked to give their own suggestions for students’ reading comprehension improvement

In order to verify the results from the questionnaire data analysis, the researcher of the current study used another instrument to collect data on the issue being studied

In particular, the researcher conducted semi-structured interviews to investigate the students’ and the lecturers’ view and explanation about the reading comprehension problems that students at TDMU are facing

The open-ended questions in the student interview were designed based on research objectives in order to explore students’ view and explanation about their problems of reading skills The interview consists of ten questions asking students to share their opinion about their attitudes towards reading comprehension, the factors affecting reading comprehension, their problems about decoding and fluency, linguistic knowledge, reading strategies, favorite reading texts, and favorite reading environment (see Appendix 3)

The open-ended questions in the student interview were designed also based on research objectives in order to explore teachers’ opinion on their students’ problems of reading skills The interview consists of ten questions, divided into three main topics: reading teaching, reading environment and reading motivation (see Appendix 4).

Instrument Validity and Reliability

It can be said that the validity of a research instrument is important and indispensable in scientific research because validity indicates the extent to which the questionnaire reflects reality as it will measure what the researcher intends to measure According to Cohen, Manion, and Morrison (2007), some of the principles for the validity of quantitative research are: controllability, replicability, predictability, generalizability, context-freedom, fragmentation and atomization of research, randomization of sample, objectivity, and observability Gray (2014) points out some aspects of the questionnaire that might threaten its validity such as the wording of the questions it contains, irrelevant questions, a poor sequencing of questions or confusing structure or design of questionnaire Trying to indicate how the research questions of a questionnaire should be, a number of researchers such as Payne and Payne (2004), Dawson (2009) and Kumar (2014) caution about using ambiguous questions, double- barreled questions, leading questions, questions with complex or technical terms, or questions that are based on presumptions Dawson (2009) indicates the importance of making the questionnaire as short as possible with a mix of question formats, starting with easy to answer questions, and avoiding words with emotional connotations that might cause offence, embarrassment, sadness, anger or frustration

Therefore, to ensure the linguistic validity of the research instrument, the wording of the questions in both questionnaires in the current study was written with a careful consideration to avoid misunderstanding of the questions by respondents In particular, a linguistic check-up of questionnaire wording was performed by a group of five students The question items that confused them were then rewritten and rechecked In addition, to ensure the content validity, the questions in both questionnaires were read by a group of two English teachers who can evaluate whether the questions are essential and useful or not (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2009) Also, the questionnaires of this study were checked by the researcher’s supervisor

If the validity of a research instrument is important and indispensable in scientific research, reliability is a necessary condition for validity because reliability is a measure of consistency over time and over similar samples (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007)

In other words, a reliable instrument for a piece of research will yield similar data from similar respondents over time So, in order to eliminate the returned questionnaires that are considered unreliable to increase the degree of data validity, a test and then a retest were undertaken within two questionnaires, one for students and the other for teachers The test and retest are described as follows:

In the questionnaire for students, the researcher designed two pairs of statements that are for reliability checking Each pair shares the same message, but expressed in different words In particular, the first pair of statements for reliability checking (see Figure 3.5) are question item 23 “It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it out loud” and question item 24 “It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it silently”

In this reliability checking, the returned questionnaire is determined to be invalid if the respondent chooses between 1 “strongly disagree” and 2 “disagree” for question item

23 while he/she also chooses between 1 “strongly disagree” and 2 “disagree” for question item 24; or, if the respondent chooses between 4 “agree” and 5 “strongly agree” for question item 23 while he/she also chooses between 4 “agree” and 5

“strongly agree” for question item 24 In keeping with this sense, the returned questionnaire is determined to be invalid because the answer to question item 23 does not correlate with the one to question item 24 This means that if the respondent strongly disagrees that “it’s hard for him/her to comprehend the text if he/she reads it out loud”, he/she should at least be unsure, agree or even strongly agree that “it’s hard for him/her to comprehend the text if he/she reads it silently”

Figure 3.5 Reliability checking 1 for student questionnaire

Similarly, the second pair of statements for reliability checking (see Figure 3.6) are option 3 “You feel the most comfortable while reading” and option 4 “You feel the most uncomfortable while reading” In this reliability checking, the returned questionnaire is determined to be invalid if the respondent chooses both option 3 and option 4 for any of the items from 61 to 70 This means that if the respondent feels both

Part 4 Problem about Decoding and Fluency

Read the following statements and mark the number, 1-5, which shows the extent to what you disagree or agree

1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

22 Sometimes, I misunderstand the sentence/text because I confuse this word with another

23 It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it out loud

24 It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it silently the most comfortable (option 3) and uncomfortable (option 4) while reading in class (individual work) (item 61), there is no consistency between two options that the respondent checks.

Figure 3.6 Reliability checking 2 for student questionnaire

Thus, through these two instrument reliability checks, the data from student questionnaires are expected to be more valid for analysis in the hope that the researcher can draw a precise picture of the research problem being studied

Similar to reliability checking for student questionnaires, in the teacher questionnaire, the researcher designed a pair of questions that shares the same kind of information being expectedly collected, but one expressed in affirmative structure and the other in negative one They are question item 5 “How many of your students finish reading the text within the allotted time?” and question item 6 “How many of your students never finish reading the text within the allotted time?” (see Figure 3.7)

Part 9 Problem about reading environment (learning style)

Read the following situations where you read and mark the number, 1-5 (you can choose more than one number), which shows that:

2 You love reading the most

3 You feel the most comfortable while reading

4 You feel the most uncomfortable while reading

5 You read with the highest comprehension

65 At home (in your own room)

66 At home (in the living room where TV is on or others are talking, laughing, eating, or playing)

67 In library where it’s quite quiet

68 In coffee shop where others are drinking and chatting

69 In the park where it’s quite quiet

70 On the bus/train/plane with a lot of noise

Figure 3.7 Reliability checking for teacher questionnaire

In this reliability checking, the returned questionnaire is determined to be invalid if these two questions are answered inconsistently For example, if the respondent chooses “50%-75%” for question item 5 while he/she also chooses between “50%-75%” and “More than 75%” for question item 6, this means that the answer to question item

5 does not correlate with the one to question item 6 Hence, it is invalid for analysis.

Data Collection Procedure

3.5.1 Data Collection Procedure of Questionnaires

After designing the questionnaires to collect data from students and teachers, testing the validity of research instruments (as described in section 3.5.1), and calculating the sample size, the researcher implemented the online data collection by creating online questionnaire forms on https://docs.google.com/forms/ For the student questionnaire, to make students more interested in answering the questionnaire, its items were grouped into nine separate parts and displayed the hidden way This means that when students finish answering the first part, the second part is shown, and this takes place until the end

Then, thanks to the support of the staff in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Thu Dau Mot University, the links of the questionnaires were distributed to the respondents (both students and teachers) through Zalo groups and emails The data collection procedure took place in the first semester of the academic year 2022-2023, from September 8th, 2022 to September 28th, 2022 In the end, it took 20 days to collect data from the students and 14 days from teachers This period was long enough to ensure that the respondents took the questionnaire items into consideration so as to give their

5 How many of your students finish reading the text within the allotted time

6 How many of your students never finish reading the text within the allotted time

 More than 75% thoughtful answers In addition to the research purposes, explanations, as well as “thank you” presented in the questionnaires, the participants were also provided with this kind of information in Zalo groups and emails This was to expect that the respondents would take time to send their valuable answers to the questionnaires

3.5.2 Data Collection Procedure of Interviews

After the time of questionnaire data collection, a total of 10 students were selected and 5 lecturers were selected for the interview The interviewees were selected on a voluntary basis The reason why the researcher chose interviewees on a voluntary basis is because if they are willing to participate in the interview, they will provide true and valuable responses

After choosing participants for the interview, the researcher made discussions with students to set up the appropriate time to meet them For the convenience, for each student, the researcher made a Zalo video call to interview him/her It took three days to interview all of ten students However, for each teacher, the researcher met him/her in person because the researcher and they all work at TDMU Because of the teachers’ busy jobs, it took the researchers two weeks to interview them

As a basis for data analysis, the interviews were recorded with all interviewees’ agreement using an audio recorder.

Data Analysis Procedures

3.6.1 Procedures of Data Analysis of Questionnaires

3.6.1.1 Procedure of data analysis of student questionnaire

Procedures of data analysis of student questionnaires were divided into three phases as follows:

Phase 1: After the time of data collection, an Excel file of 206 returned questionnaires was downloaded Then, the researcher read and eliminated the questionnaires that are invalid on the basis of the criteria for reliability checking (as described in section 3.5.2.1) from the data sheet As a result, 77 of the returned questionnaires were determined to be invalid Therefore, the data from 129 valid questionnaires were used and analyzed for the current study

Phase 2: The researcher implemented the coding of the questionnaire In items were coded from Q1 to Q70 For questionnaire item 44, the respondents can choose more than one option, so its sub-items were coded from Q44.1 to Q44.9 for inputting data into SPSS software At the same time, the sub-items of questionnaire items from 61 to 70 were also coded from Q*.1 to Q*.5, in which * ranges from 61 to

70 For five-point Likert scale items, the five-point scale was coded from number 1 for

“strongly disagree” to 5 for “strongly agree” For multiple-choice items, options were coded from 1 to the number that is the total number of options in each questionnaire item

Phase 3: The researcher entered the coded data from Excel file into SPSS Statistics 22 software and made necessary descriptive statistics, such as the mean, SD (standard deviation), the range, variance, maximum and minimum values, correlation coefficient, compare mean (one-way ANOVA), etc., for summarizing, presenting, and analyzing the findings In this stage, the results of the survey became more visual and quantitative for discussion, analysis and report

3.6.1.2 Procedure of data analysis of teacher questionnaire

Similarly, procedures of data analysis of teacher questionnaires were divided into three phases as follows:

Phase 1: After the time of data collection, an Excel file of 22 returned questionnaires was downloaded Then, the research read and eliminated the questionnaires that are invalid on the basis of the criteria for reliability checking (as described in section 3.5.2.2) from the data sheet As a result, three of the returned questionnaires were determined to be invalid Therefore, the data from 19 valid questionnaires were used and analyzed for the current study

Phase 2: The researcher implemented the coding of the questionnaire In particular, 19 valid questionnaires were coded from 1 to 19 Thirteen questionnaire items were coded from Q1 to Q13 For questionnaire items from 10 to 13, the respondents can choose more than one option, so their sub-items were also coded from Q*.1 to Q*.#, in which * ranges from 10 to 13 and # is the total number of options in each questionnaire item For item options, they were coded from 1 to number that is the total number of options in each questionnaire item

Phase 3: The researcher entered the coded data from Excel file into SPSS Statistics 22 software and made necessary descriptive statistics, such as the mean, SD (standard deviation), the range, variance, maximum and minimum values, correlation coefficient, etc., for summarizing, presenting, and analyzing the findings In this stage, the results of the survey became more visual and quantitative for discussion, analysis and report

3.6.2 Procedures of Data Analysis of Interviews

To analyze the qualitative data gathered from the interview, the researcher listened to the recordings and transcribed all of the interviewee’s words (see Appendix

6 and Appendix 7) After transcribing all data, interview data were organized according to the interview questions for the purpose of generalizing the findings (see Appendix 8 and Appendix 9) Then, the researcher identified pertinent themes for the analysis.

Research Ethics

According to Duncombe and Jessop (2005), research ethics is one of the most important parts in designing and conducting research It relates to standards that help determine what is acceptable and unacceptable These standards help prevent bad effects that the research results may cause (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007; Greener, 2011) Moreover, Gray (2014) argues that research ethics are concerned with the moral principles that guide research Gray (2014) lists four main areas of ethical principles: avoiding harm to participants, ensuring informed consent of participants, respecting the privacy of participants, and avoiding the use of deception When conducting research, researchers have to be aware of the ethical issues that are related to their studies Similarly, Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill (2009) highlight the significance of ensuring avoiding harming, embarrassing, stressing or discomforting participants in any way and to guarantee the privacy of participants, the voluntary participation, obtaining consent from participants, and confidentiality of data and anonymity

In this regard, the current study was carried out in the hope that it provides the readers with the problems of reading skills that English majors at Thu Dau Mot University are facing; with more insights into whether the students’ personal factors (gender, living region, family’s economics status, academic levels and favorite skills) problems Apart from these three goals, the study was not conducted for the purposes of judging, evaluating, or criticizing the students’ weaknesses In addition, all students and teachers who participated in the study have been informed about the nature and purpose of the study with emphasis on the voluntary nature of participation The students and teachers in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Thu Dau Mot University who participated in the questionnaires were informed that they had the right to refuse or withdraw from the study at any stage and that would not affect their program of study in any way These letters assure participants anonymity and confidentiality at all times throughout the study in the treatment of any data collated.

Chapter Summary

To reach the aims of the current study, quantitative and qualitative research methods were chosen Questionnaires and interviews were chosen as data collection instruments for gathering the data needed to answer the research questions and achieve the objectives of this study The validity and reliability of questionnaires were also discussed The next chapter concerns the findings that resulted from the analysis.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

Students’ Demographics

As provided by the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Thu Dau Mot University, the number of English majors at the faculty is around 500 students and the number of freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors is approximately equal among groups They were all expected to participate in this study After the period of data collection, however, 206 students returned the questionnaires, but 77 of those questionnaires were invalid because they did not satisfy the criteria for reliability checking, as stated in section 3.4.2.1 Therefore, below is some demographic information of 129 students who provided with valid questionnaires that are valuable for analysis

About the participants’ gender, Table 4.1 shows that there is a big difference in participants’ gender Out of the total number of 129 students, there are 38 (29.5%) male students and 91 (70.5%) female students who provided with valid data for the analysis female English majors is much higher than male ones Although the ratio of male and female students who participated in this study is quite unbalanced, the number is enough to help conclude whether there is any significant difference in students’ problems of reading skills in terms of their gender

About participants’ academic levels, Table 4.2 shows that out of the total number of 129 participants, there are 3 (2.3%) freshmen, 62 (48.1%) sophomores, 19 (14.7%) juniors, 33 (25.6%) seniors, and 12 (9.3%) students who have studied for more than 4 years at TDMU This statistical result shows that although the ratio of freshmen, sophomore, junior and senior is not balanced, it covers all students who are doing a degree in English at Thu Dau Mot University So, this helps the researcher determine whether there is any significant difference in students’ problems of reading skills in terms of their academic levels

The statistical result (see Table 4.3) also shows that the majority (69.8%) of students are from the Southeast of Vietnam while a small number (30.2%) of students are from other parts of the country such as: Northeast (5.4%), Northwest (4.7%), Red River Delta (2.3%), North Central Coast (4.7%), South Central Coast Central (5.4%), Highlands (3.1%), Mekong River Delta (4.7%) Hence, it can be concluded that most English majors at Thu Dau Mot University could have started learning English from a very young age and could have been aware of the importance of English because most of them live in the regions with high speed of economic growth like Southeast

Moreover, most (72.1%) of them live in the urban area while there are just 27.9% of them living in the rural or remote area (see Table 4.4) This result reflects that the majority of English majors at Thu Dau Mot University could have had good environments to learn English because there are enough schools or English centers for them to learn English

4 You live in a family with …? good economics status 9 7.0 normal economics status 111 86.0 low economics status 9 7.0

Besides living in urban areas in the Southeast of Vietnam, the survey result (see Table 4.5) shows that the majority of participants live in families with normal economic status Table 4.5 shows that up to 86% of them live in families with normal economic status and 7% in families with good economic status while just 7% of them live in majority of English majors at Thu Dau Mot University could have had good opportunities and conditions to learn English since they were very young Furthermore, this finding indicates that there is no significant difference in participants’ family’s economic status

6 How much time a day do you spend learning

The result of the survey indicates that in addition to the time they learn English at school, the English majors at Thu Dau Mot University also spend time learning at home Notably, about 64% of the students who participated in the survey spend at least two hours a day learning English at home, and about 36% of them spend less than one hour learning at home (see Table 4.6) This figure implies that most English majors at Thu Dau Mot University love learning the language they chose and want to improve it day by day

7 Which is your favorite skill? listening 74 57.4 reading 22 17.1 writing 8 6.2 speaking 25 19.4

Unfortunately, a very small number (17.1%) of students choose reading as their favorite skill (see Table 4.7) This means that although most English majors at Thu Dau Mot University love learning the language they chose, they are uninterested in reading They prefer other skills, like listening skills (57.4%), writing (6.2%) and speaking (19.4%) Therefore, the researcher of the current study will try to investigate whether the students may have problems with reading skills because of not having interest in reading

In conclusion, the statistical results of participants’ demographics show that they are quite different in terms of gender, living region, academic levels, and favorite skills However, there are no significant differences in participants’ family’s economics status because a very large number of participants are from families with good economic status and normal economics status Therefore, participants’ gender, living region, academic levels, and favorite skills are chosen as independent variables to determine whether there are any statistically significant differences in the students’ reading comprehension problems among these groups At the same time, the result of the group-difference analysis hopefully makes a great contribution to the adjustment of teachers’ reading teaching methods.

Problem About Attitude Towards Reading Comprehension

It can be wondered that attitude plays an important role in enhancing language learning According to Gardner (1985), attitude was considered as a component of motivation in language learning Brown (2000) concluded that positive attitude towards the self, the native language group, and the target language group enhanced proficiency Achievement in learning a language depended not only on learners’ intelligence but also on the learner’s attitude It seemed that everyone from students, teachers, to researchers all agreed that high motivation and positive attitude to a language and its culture contribute to achievements in learning that language (De Bot et al., 2005) According to Choy and Troudi (2006), attitude could help the learners to express whether they liked or disliked the objects or surrounding situations It was agreed that the inner feelings and emotions of foreign language learners influenced their perspectives and their attitudes towards the target language Kara (2009) stated that a positive attitude could lead to the exhibition of positive behaviors toward courses of study In keeping with this sense, attitude towards reading comprehension also plays a vital role Students’ reading comprehension can be enhanced if they have a positive attitude and can be torn down if they have a negative one Hence, the current research aimed at finding out how the attitude of English majors at Thu Dau Mot University is towards reading

Students’ Attitude Towards Reading Comprehension

9 Reading comprehension is necessary for me, an

English major, because I can increase my range of vocabulary, knowledge, and thought

10 I don’t feel bored when I have to practice reading comprehension day after day 129 1.0 5.0 3.155 9308

11 I don’t get anxious about reading when my reading skill is not good 129 1.0 5.0 2.783 9997

12 I often read actively to help me improve my thinking and my learning 129 1.0 5.0 3.628 8845

13 I look forward to reading more kinds of materials in the future 129 1.0 5.0 3.853 9023

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

Unexpectedly, the survey result shows that most participants do not have a very positive attitude towards reading skills despite the fact that they agree that reading comprehension is necessary for them because they can increase their range of vocabulary, knowledge, and thought (see Q9’s mean=4.047) in Table 4.8) In particular, in terms of emotional attitude, the participants do not feel very positive toward reading skills Q10’s mean = 3.155 (see Table 4.8) which is a little over the point 3.0 “not decided” indicates that the participants did not decide if they don’t feel bored when they have to practice reading comprehension day after day Moreover, Q11’s mean = 2.783 (see Table 4.8) which is nearly equal to the point 3.0 “not decided” indicates that the participants did not decide if they don’t get anxious about reading when their reading skill is not good At the same time, in terms of behavioral attitude, the participants are not so sure that they actively read This is demonstrated by the mean = 3.628 (see Table 4.8) which is far away from the point 4.0 “agree” of Q12 asking the participants if they often read actively to help them improve their thinking and their learning; and the mean

= 3.853 (see Table 4.8) which is nearly equal to the point 4.0 “agree” of Q13 asking the participants if they look forward to reading more kinds of materials in the future Therefore, although the participants are aware that reading is necessary, they do not have a clear attitude towards reading skills The findings from the student interviews also show the same result In particular, when asked “How do you feel about reading?

Why?”, most of the interviewed students shared that they feel bored, sleepy, difficult, or even stressed about reading For instance, Student 9 said that “In my opinion, I feel very bored when reading books Because I can't focus on books for a long time Although reading books brings me more knowledge, I choose to listen to music to relax after stressful studying hours” (see Appendix 8) This data shows that although the students understand the importance of reading, they find it hard to make themselves interested in reading

Attitude Towards Reading Comprehension According to Students’ Favorite Skills

9 Reading comprehension is necessary for me, an

English major, because I can increase my range of vocabulary, knowledge, and thought listening 74 4.027 9212 1071 3.814 4.240 1.0 5.0 reading 22 4.455 5096 1087 4.229 4.681 4.0 5.0 writing 8 3.750 1.1650 4119 2.776 4.724 2.0 5.0 speaking 25 3.840 1.1060 2212 3.383 4.297 1.0 5.0 Total 129 4.047 9342 0823 3.884 4.209 1.0 5.0

10 I don’t feel bored when I have to practice reading comprehension day after day listening 74 3.297 9324 1084 3.081 3.513 2.0 5.0 reading 22 3.182 8528 1818 2.804 3.560 2.0 5.0 writing 8 3.000 9258 3273 2.226 3.774 2.0 4.0 speaking 25 2.760 9256 1851 2.378 3.142 1.0 4.0 Total 129 3.155 9308 0820 2.993 3.317 1.0 5.0

11 I don’t get anxious about reading when my reading skill is not good listening 74 2.865 1.0511 1222 2.621 3.108 1.0 5.0 reading 22 2.727 1.0320 2200 2.270 3.185 1.0 5.0 writing 8 2.750 8864 3134 2.009 3.491 2.0 4.0 speaking 25 2.600 8660 1732 2.243 2.957 1.0 4.0 Total 129 2.783 9997 0880 2.609 2.957 1.0 5.0

12 I often read actively to help me improve my thinking and my learning listening 74 3.649 8980 1044 3.441 3.857 1.0 5.0 reading 22 3.773 5284 1127 3.538 4.007 3.0 5.0 writing 8 3.375 9161 3239 2.609 4.141 2.0 5.0 speaking 25 3.520 1.0847 2169 3.072 3.968 1.0 5.0 Total 129 3.628 8845 0779 3.474 3.782 1.0 5.0

13 I look forward to reading more kinds of materials in the future listening 74 3.892 8691 1010 3.691 4.093 2.0 5.0 reading 22 4.000 6901 1471 3.694 4.306 3.0 5.0 writing 8 3.750 8864 3134 3.009 4.491 2.0 5.0 speaking 25 3.640 1.1504 2301 3.165 4.115 1.0 5.0 Total 129 3.853 9023 0794 3.696 4.010 1.0 5.0

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

More notably, as shown in Table 4.9, the result of One-Way ANOVA test reveals that even for those who are interested in reading, they do not actually have a positive attitude towards reading comprehension In particular, in terms of emotional attitude, 22 participants who often spend more time on reading do not feel very positive toward reading skills Q10’s mean = 3.182 (which is a little over the point 3.0 “not decided”) by participants with interest in reading indicates that these participants did not decide if they don’t feel bored when they have to practice reading comprehension day after day Moreover, Q11’s mean = 2.727 (which is quite far away from the point 3.0 “not decided”) by participants with interest in reading indicates that these participants did not decide if they don’t get anxious about reading when their reading skill is not good At the same time, in terms of behavioral attitude, these participants are not so sure that they actively read This is demonstrated by the mean = 3.773 (which is far away from the point 4.0 “agree”) of Q12 asking the participants if they often read actively to help them improve their thinking and their learning Hence, a conclusion can be made that the emotional attitude of TDMU’s English majors who are interested in reading skill is not really positive towards reading comprehension

Attitude Towards Reading Comprehension According to Students’ Academic Levels

9 Reading comprehension is necessary for me, an English major, because I can increase my range of vocabulary, knowledge, and thought

Freshman 3 4.333 5774 3333 2.899 5.768 4.0 5.0 Sophomore 62 3.919 1.0130 1287 3.662 4.177 1.0 5.0 Junior 19 4.158 8342 1914 3.756 4.560 3.0 5.0 Senior 33 4.212 9273 1614 3.883 4.541 1.0 5.0 Other 12 4.000 7385 2132 3.531 4.469 2.0 5.0 Total 129 4.047 9342 0823 3.884 4.209 1.0 5.0

10 I don’t feel bored when I have to practice reading comprehension day after day

Freshman 3 3.667 5774 3333 2.232 5.101 3.0 4.0 Sophomore 62 3.226 9653 1226 2.981 3.471 1.0 5.0 Junior 19 2.789 8550 1961 2.377 3.202 1.0 4.0 Senior 33 3.182 9828 1711 2.833 3.530 1.0 5.0 Other 12 3.167 7177 2072 2.711 3.623 2.0 5.0 Total 129 3.155 9308 0820 2.993 3.317 1.0 5.0

11 I don’t get anxious about reading when my reading skill is not good

Freshman 3 3.667 5774 3333 2.232 5.101 3.0 4.0 Sophomore 62 2.629 1.0280 1306 2.368 2.890 1.0 5.0 Junior 19 3.053 8481 1946 2.644 3.461 1.0 4.0 Senior 33 2.788 9273 1614 2.459 3.117 1.0 5.0 Other 12 2.917 1.2401 3580 2.129 3.705 1.0 5.0

12 I often read actively to help me improve my thinking and my learning

Freshman 3 4.667 5774 3333 3.232 6.101 4.0 5.0 Sophomore 62 3.532 8630 1096 3.313 3.751 1.0 5.0 Junior 19 3.474 1.0733 2462 2.956 3.991 2.0 5.0 Senior 33 3.727 8013 1395 3.443 4.011 2.0 5.0 Other 12 3.833 8348 2410 3.303 4.364 2.0 5.0 Total 129 3.628 8845 0779 3.474 3.782 1.0 5.0

13 I look forward to reading more kinds of materials in the future

Freshman 3 4.333 5774 3333 2.899 5.768 4.0 5.0 Sophomore 62 3.661 9572 1216 3.418 3.904 1.0 5.0 Junior 19 3.895 8753 2008 3.473 4.317 2.0 5.0 Senior 33 4.182 8083 1407 3.895 4.468 2.0 5.0 Other 12 3.750 7538 2176 3.271 4.229 2.0 5.0 Total 129 3.853 9023 0794 3.696 4.010 1.0 5.0

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

As presented in Table 4.10, it is appearing worse when the result of One-Way Anova test reveals that the emotional attitude towards reading comprehension is statistically different among freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors The difference is that the longer the students learn at university, the less positive they feel towards reading comprehension Let us take a look at Q10’s One-Way Anova test result There is a steady decrease in average score In detail, the average score of Q10 that freshmen marked is 3.667 whereas the average scores that sophomores, juniors, seniors, and others (students who study longer than 4 years) marked are 3.226, 2.789, 3.182, and 3.167, respectively The same things happen to the One-Way Anova test results of questions from 11 to 13 From this analysis, it is persuasive to infer that the attitude of English majors at Thu Dau Mot University towards reading comprehension changes from positive to negative if they study longer at the university In other words, seniors’ attitude towards reading comprehension is more negative than freshmen’s

From what has been discussed above, a conclusion is made that English majors at Thu Dau Mot University are facing a problem in terms of attitude, especially emotional attitude, in reading comprehension More notably, even students who are interested in reading skills are also facing this kind of problem Also, the worst thing that the One-Way Anova test result revealed is that the attitude of English majors at Thu Dau Mot University towards reading comprehension changes from positive to negative if they study longer at the university In other words, seniors’ attitude towards reading researcher suggests that in reading class, students’ emotional attitude, especially seniors’, should be considered Teachers should make reading activities more varied and interesting Moreover, they should not make their students more stressed because of their students’ weaknesses in reading comprehension.

Problems About Perception of the Factors Affecting Reading Comprehension 48 4.4 Problems About Decoding and Fluency

Students’ Perception of the Factors Affecting Reading Comprehension Skills

14 Vocabulary plays a very important role in reading comprehension 129 1.0 5.0 4.364 8921

15 Being bad at grammar will limit my reading comprehension 129 1.0 5.0 3.721 1.0153

16 My background knowledge helps me understand the text better 129 1.0 5.0 3.891 9035

17 It is hard for me and takes me more time to comprehend the difficult reading texts 129 2.0 5.0 3.922 8349

18 I will lose my concentration in understanding the text when there are noises 129 1.0 5.0 3.961 9220

19 It’s easier to understand the text when I read for enjoyment than for examination 129 1.0 5.0 3.853 9851

20 It’s easier to understand the texts that I find interesting than ones I’m not 129 1.0 5.0 4.023 9309

21 It’s easy to understand the text if I have good reading strategies 129 1.0 5.0 4.008 9312

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

In addition to attitude, perception of the factors affecting reading comprehension also plays an important role in enhancing reading comprehension In keeping with this sense, the current research aimed at finding out how the students’ perception of the factors affecting reading comprehension is And, the result of the survey on this issue came out positive The statistical results in Table 4.11 show that the majority of the participants are well aware of the factors that affect their reading comprehension The average score (M=3.968) of all participants’ responses to eight questions numbered from

14 to 21 is nearly equal to the point 4.0 “agree” (see Table 4.11) The most outstanding finding from the survey (see Table 4.11) is that most participants evaluated that vocabulary plays a very important role in reading comprehension (see Q14’s mean 4.364) in Table 4.11) Similarly, in the interview, when asked “Which is the most important? Why?”, eight (80%) of ten students said that vocabulary is the most important in reading As Student 8 shared “In my opinion, vocabulary is the most important because in order to understand the text, it is necessary to understand what most of the words mean” (see Appendix 8), it can be seen that limited vocabulary will hinder students’ successful comprehension In addition to vocabulary, all of the interviewed students gave the answer to the question “Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?” that grammar and text structure are also important in reading For example, Student 8 shared “Yes, because when I have the vocabulary, grammar and understand the text structure, I can read and understand the content of the text” (see Appendix 8)

Moreover, two other outstanding findings from the survey are that it’s easier for most participants to understand the texts that they find interesting (see Q20’s mean 4.023 in Table 4.11) and it’s easy for them to understand the text if they have good reading strategies (see Q21’s mean = 4.008 in Table 4.11) Besides, the participants are also aware of the effects of other factors on their reading comprehension, including: grammar, background knowledge, the complexity of reading texts, reading environment like noises, and reading purpose like enjoyment or examination

Perception of the Factors Affecting Reading Comprehension Skills According to

14 Vocabulary plays a very important role in reading comprehension listening 74 4.392 8886 1033 4.186 4.598 1.0 5.0 reading 22 4.545 5958 1270 4.281 4.810 3.0 5.0 writing 8 4.000 1.0690 3780 3.106 4.894 2.0 5.0 speaking 25 4.240 1.0520 2104 3.806 4.674 1.0 5.0 Total 129 4.364 8921 0785 4.209 4.520 1.0 5.0

15 Being bad at grammar will limit my reading listening 74 3.716 1.1289 1312 3.455 3.978 1.0 5.0 reading 22 3.909 6838 1458 3.606 4.212 2.0 5.0

16 My background knowledge helps me understand the text better listening 74 3.919 9180 1067 3.706 4.132 1.0 5.0 reading 22 4.045 7854 1675 3.697 4.394 3.0 5.0 writing 8 3.500 9258 3273 2.726 4.274 2.0 5.0 speaking 25 3.800 9574 1915 3.405 4.195 1.0 5.0 Total 129 3.891 9035 0795 3.734 4.049 1.0 5.0

17 It is hard for me and takes me more time to comprehend the difficult reading texts listening 74 3.892 8532 0992 3.694 4.090 2.0 5.0 reading 22 4.091 7502 1599 3.758 4.424 3.0 5.0 writing 8 3.500 5345 1890 3.053 3.947 3.0 4.0 speaking 25 4.000 9129 1826 3.623 4.377 2.0 5.0 Total 129 3.922 8349 0735 3.777 4.068 2.0 5.0

18 I will lose my concentration in understanding the text when there are noises listening 74 3.878 9356 1088 3.662 4.095 1.0 5.0 reading 22 4.136 7102 1514 3.821 4.451 3.0 5.0 writing 8 3.750 1.0351 3660 2.885 4.615 2.0 5.0 speaking 25 4.120 1.0132 2026 3.702 4.538 1.0 5.0 Total 129 3.961 9220 0812 3.801 4.122 1.0 5.0

19 It’s easier to understand the text when I read for enjoyment than for examination listening 74 3.946 1.0054 1169 3.713 4.179 1.0 5.0 reading 22 4.182 8528 1818 3.804 4.560 2.0 5.0 writing 8 3.375 1.0607 3750 2.488 4.262 2.0 5.0 speaking 25 3.440 8699 1740 3.081 3.799 2.0 5.0 Total 129 3.853 9851 0867 3.681 4.024 1.0 5.0

20 It’s easier to understand the texts that I find interesting than ones I’m not listening 74 4.108 8691 1010 3.907 4.309 2.0 5.0 reading 22 4.273 8270 1763 3.906 4.639 2.0 5.0 writing 8 3.875 6409 2266 3.339 4.411 3.0 5.0 speaking 25 3.600 1.1547 2309 3.123 4.077 1.0 5.0 Total 129 4.023 9309 0820 3.861 4.185 1.0 5.0

21 It’s easy to understand the text if I have good reading strategies listening 74 3.986 9999 1162 3.755 4.218 2.0 5.0 reading 22 4.227 6853 1461 3.923 4.531 3.0 5.0 writing 8 3.750 1.0351 3660 2.885 4.615 2.0 5.0 speaking 25 3.960 8888 1778 3.593 4.327 1.0 5.0 Total 129 4.008 9312 0820 3.846 4.170 1.0 5.0

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

Generally, the statistical result in Table 4.11 shows that the majority of the participants are well aware of the factors that affect their reading comprehension As a matter of hypothesis, however, the researcher wondered that the participants who are interested in reading could be better aware of the factors that affect their reading comprehension than other participants Therefore, the researcher made a One-Way Anova test to test this hypothesis Then, the result came out as hypothesized This means that the participants with high interest in reading have better awareness of the factors that affect their reading comprehension than other participants Let us take a look at the average scores (mean) of questions from 14 to 21 that were marked by the participants with high interest in reading (see Table 4.12) It is definitely clear that these average scores are all the highest This indicates that there is a statistically significant difference in their perception of the factors that affect their reading comprehension in terms of the participants’ favorite skills

Perception of the Factors Affecting Reading Comprehension Skills According to

Sum of Squares df Mean

14 Vocabulary plays a very important role in reading comprehension

15 Being bad at grammar will limit my reading comprehension

16 My background knowledge helps me understand the text better

17 It is hard for me and takes me more time to comprehend the difficult reading texts

18 I will lose my concentration in understanding the text when there are noises

19 It’s easier to understand the text when I read for enjoyment than for examination

20 It’s easier to understand the texts that I find interesting than ones I’m not

21 It’s easy to understand the text if I have good reading strategies

In the same way, the researcher also wanted to test whether the participants’ academic levels would affect how well they are aware of the factors that affect their reading comprehension Therefore, the researcher also made a One-Way Anova test to examine this hypothesis Then, the result came out not as hypothesized Table 4.13 shows that all significance (Sig.) levels of questions from 14 to 21 are all greater than the 0.05 level of significance Hence, this can infer that all participants including freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors are equally well aware of the factors that

A conclusion drawn from the above discussion is that English majors at Thu Dau Mot University are not currently facing any problem in terms of their perception of the factors affecting their reading comprehension, including: vocabulary, grammar, background knowledge, the complexity of reading texts, reading environment like noises, reading purpose like enjoyment or examination, reading materials, and reading strategies On the contrary, they are well aware of the effects of these factors on their reading comprehension Not surprisingly, the students with high interest in reading have better awareness of the effects of these factors than other participants who are interested in listening, speaking, and writing At the same time, the result of One-Way Anova test (see Table 4.13) also indicates that all English majors including freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors are equally well aware of the factors that affect their reading comprehension Therefore, this is a valuable basis for teachers to encourage their students in reading classes because the students understand clearly the factors that may affect their reading comprehension However, according to teachers at TDMU, 63.2% of them suggested that in order to improve reading comprehension skills, students need to increase their awareness of the role of reading (see Appendix 5)

4.4 Problems About Decoding and Fluency

According to Dennis (2008), decoding or word recognition speed (fluency) was acknowledged to be one of the causes of poor reading comprehension This means that readers who have problems in decoding and recognizing words read slowly and find it more difficult to understand the meaning of passages than those without decoding problems This factor is related to lexical processing which is a sequence of processes in which the readers recognize and access the meanings of word forms in a text (Tily, Fedorenko, & Gibson, 2010) In order to gain automatic access to words and their meanings, processing has to be practiced to a point that the lexical information contained in words takes less cognitive attention as it is easily recognized at surface (Hill, 2011) Therefore, many researchers support training learners to become automatic in word recognition to increase fluency (Chang, 2010), as automatic word recognition is crucial to fluent L2 reading comprehension (Grabe, 2010)

Students’ Problems of Reading Skills due to Decoding and Fluency

22 Sometimes, I misunderstand the sentence/text because I confuse this word with another

23 It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it out loud

24 It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it silently

25 It’s hard for me to recognize the word if I look at word spelling

26 It’s hard for me to recognize the word if I pronounce the word

27 It’s hard to finish reading the text within the allotted time my teacher gives out

28 In class, I’m often one of the last people who finish reading the text

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

Seeing this as a problem of reading skills, the researcher of the current study intensively designed seven questions (from 22 to 28) in the student questionnaire (see Appendix 1) to examine this issue Then, as a matter of result, the average mean (M=3.184, which is a little over the point 3.0 “not decided”) of seven questions finding out students’ decoding and fluency problems (see Table 4.14) generally reveals that the majority of the participants did not decide whether they are having problems about decoding and fluency or not However, Q22’s mean = 3.884, which is nearly equal to the point 4.0 “agree”, indicates that a large number (more than 70%, see Table 4.15) of participants sometimes misunderstand the sentence/text because they confuse this word with another This means that the participants sometimes face the problem of recognizing the words with similar spelling

Frequency Statistics of Students’ Problems of Reading Skills due to Decoding and Fluency

Strongly disagree Disagree Not decided Agree Strongly agree

22 Sometimes, I misunderstand the sentence/text because I confuse this word with another

23 It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it out loud 129 4

24 It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it silently 129 11

25 It’s hard for me to recognize the word if I look at word spelling 129 4

26 It’s hard for me to recognize the word if I pronounce the word 129 8

27 It’s hard to finish reading the text within the allotted time my teacher gives out

28 In class, I’m often one of the last people who finish reading the text

Teachers’ Evaluation of Students’ Reading Speed

No of cases Less than

5 How many of your students finish reading the text within the allotted time

6 How many of your students never finish reading the text within the allotted time

In addition, Q27’s mean = 3.442 (see Table 4.14) indicates that a relatively large number (approximately 47% ≈ 37.2% + 9.3%, see Table 4.15) of participants feel hard to finish reading the text within the allotted time their teacher gives out This result is confirmed by the survey result from teachers In particular, the result of Q5 in Table 4.16 indicates that only around 58% of the teachers say that 50%-75% of their students finish reading the text within the allotted time whereas up to 31% of the teachers say that only 25%-50% of their students finish reading the text within the allotted time Through both results, one from students and another from teacher, it is true that the number of students who can finish reading the text within the allotted time is not large

In other words, many students read at a slow speed This conclusion becomes firmer when there are up to 32 participants (about 25%, see Table 4.15) who are often in a group of people who finish reading the text in class This result is also confirmed by the survey result from teachers In particular, the result of question 6 in Table 4.16 indicates that up to 47% of the teachers say that less than 25% of their students never finish reading the text within the allotted time, whereas up to 25% of the teachers say that 25%-50% of their students never finish reading the text within the allotted time This discussion infers that in addition to word confusion, many participants are facing the problem about fluency The findings from the student interviews also show that most students hardly finish reading the text within the allotted time For example, when asked

“Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?”, Student 3 said “Not always but usually because if there are no many new vocabulary I can finish on time”

(see Appendix 8), and Students 9 shared “I never finished reading the article before the allotted time because my reading skills are not good and the time is too short” (see

Appendix 8) However, Student 8 argued that “It also depends on the reading Readings that use a lot of difficult specialized words take a long time for me to understand So, I often overread the allotted time” (see Appendix 8) Through these findings, it can be seen that the reasons why students cannot finish reading within the allotted time are that students have limited vocabulary and bad reading skills, and the reading time is too short

Teachers’ Observation of Students’ Reading Mode

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Another important thing that the survey on teachers’ opinion on students’ problems of reading skills uncovered is that most English majors read silently This is because up to 94% of teachers say that most of their students read silently (see Table 4.17) But, the problem is that there are up to 24 (18%) out of 129 participants agreed that it’s hard for them to comprehend the text if they read it silently, whereas only 39 (about 30%) out of 129 participants disagreed, meaning it is not hard, and up to 66 (51.2%) participants did not have ideas about this (see Table 4.15) Moreover, the statistical result of question item 23 (see Table 4.15) reveals that 39 (30.3%) out of the participants agreed that it’s hard for them to comprehend the text if they read it out loud while 17 (13.2%) out of the participants disagreed, meaning it is not hard, and notably, a large number (56.6%) of participants did not have idea about this

Problems of Reading Skills due to Decoding and Fluency According to Students’ Favorite Skills

Sum of Squares df Mean

22 Sometimes, I misunderstand the sentence/text because I confuse this word with another

23 It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it out loud

24 It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it silently

25 It’s hard for me to recognize the word if I look at word spelling

26 It’s hard for me to recognize the word if I pronounce the word

27 It’s hard to finish reading the text within the allotted time my teacher gives out

28 In class, I’m often one of the last people who finish reading the text

What has been discussed above shows that English majors at Thu Dau Mot University are currently facing decoding and fluency problems in their reading comprehension However, as a matter of hypothesis, the researcher has experienced that people who love reading often read silently For this reason, the researcher wanted to test whether there is any statistically significant difference in students’ decoding and fluency problems or not in terms of their favorite skills To do this, a One-Way Anova Test on decoding and fluency problems encountered by groups of participants divided by their favorite skills was carried out Then, the result came out not as hypothesized Table 4.18 shows that all significance (Sig.) levels of question items from 22 to 28 are all greater than the 0.05 level of significance Hence, this can infer that the participants including ones who are interested in reading, writing, speaking, or listening are all facing decoding and fluency problems in their reading comprehension

All in all, it can be concluded that the majority of English majors at Thu Dau Mot University are not sure whether they are having problems about decoding and fluency or not However, there are still a large number (more than 70%, see Table 4.15) of English majors who confuse words, resulting in misunderstanding This implies that English majors at TDMU sometimes face the problem of recognizing the words with similar spelling Moreover, a relatively large number (approximately 47%, see Table 4.15) of students cannot finish reading within the allotted time, meaning that their reading speed is quite slow More surprisingly, as hypothesized, the students with high interest in reading may have no problems about decoding and reading speed, but the result of One-Way Anova test (see Table 4.18) indicates that all English majors including ones who are interested in reading, writing, speaking, or listening are all facing and reading speed are two problems that English majors at TDMU are currently facing in reading comprehension

Based on these findings, the researcher recommends that students need to pay great attention to the words with similar spelling by developing their vocabulary so that they can easily guess the meaning of similar words according to the clues of context Moreover, students need to increase their reading speed in order to finish the reading text within the allotted time, as 47.4% of teachers (see Appendix 5) recommended However, teachers play a key role in developing their students’ reading speed because if they keep giving their students more time to finish the text, as 68% of teachers (see Figure 4.1) choose this option, their students may not make any effort to finish the reading text within the allotted time

Figure 4.1 Teachers’ options when their students cannot finish reading the text within the allotted time

Problems About Linguistic Knowledge

As a matter of fact, in every aspect of language learning, linguistic knowledge such as vocabulary and grammar always plays important roles In keeping with this sense, the researcher of the current study intensively designed 15 question items (from

29 to 43) to examine three important aspects of reading comprehension in terms of linguistic knowledge, including: vocabulary, grammar, and text structure This is because in terms of the complexity of the reading text, Dennis (2008) pointed out that the readers’ strength and fluency in language affect their comprehending of the reading

Give them more time to finish Stop them and continue your lesson text The reason why Dennis (2008) links the complexity of the reading text to the readers’ strength and fluency in language is that if the readers know all of the vocabulary as well as grammatical points in the text, it becomes easier for them to understand the reading text

As a matter of claim made by the researcher, vocabulary is the most important part in learning any language because the learner of a language cannot listen, read, write or speak if he or she does not have a lot of vocabulary With this regard, in reading, the learner must have a wide range of vocabulary so that they can comprehend the text well Unfortunately, the average mean = 3.543, which is nearly equal to the point 4.0 “agree”, of six questions from 29 to 34 (see Table 4.19) reveals that the majority of the participants have comprehension problems when they read due to vocabulary knowledge

Students’ Problems of Reading Skills due to Vocabulary

29 I sometimes misunderstand the text because I don’t recognize the right meaning of the word that shares different meanings

30 I can’t comprehend the text well if there are too many unknown words

31 I can’t comprehend the text well although my vocabulary almost covers the entire words in the text

32 I don’t understand the entire sentence if I can’t recognize one rare word in it

33 It takes me a lot of time to process the rare words used with lower level of frequency in the text

34 It’s hard for me to understand the text if words are used more variably in the text

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

Out of six question items, Q30’s mean = 3.992 (see Table 4.19) reveals that most participants cannot comprehend the text well if there are too many unknown words This result becomes firmer when Q31’s mean = 3.233 (see Table 4.19), which is a little over the point 3.0 “not decided”, shows that most participants have no idea on whether they cannot comprehend the text well although their vocabulary almost covers the entire words in the text or Hence, this implies that most participants have a limited range of vocabulary, leading to poor reading comprehension Due to poor vocabulary, a relatively large number of participants spend a lot of time processing the rare words used with lower levels of frequency in the text (see Q33’s mean=3.519 in Table 4.19) The problem even becomes worse when the researcher’s hypothesis, that is after studying at university for four years, the seniors may actually have a wide range of vocabulary, is null because Q30’s One-Way Anova test result (see Table 4.20) does not show any significant difference in average scores by groups of participants divided according to academic levels In other words, there is no statistically significant difference among freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors and even students having studied over 4 years at the university in comprehension problems due to vocabulary It means that seniors also have a limited range of vocabulary as much as the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors do

Problems of Reading Skills due to Vocabulary According to Students’ Academic Levels

29 I sometimes misunderstand the text because I don’t recognize the right meaning of the word that shares different meanings

Freshman 3 4.667 5774 3333 3.232 6.101 4.0 5.0 Sophomore 62 3.823 9500 1206 3.581 4.064 1.0 5.0 Junior 19 3.789 1.0842 2487 3.267 4.312 2.0 5.0 Senior 33 3.609 8427 1467 3.110 4.208 2.0 5.0 Other 12 3.600 8528 2462 3.058 4.242 2.0 5.0 Total 129 3.876 9271 0816 3.714 4.037 1.0 5.0

30 I can’t comprehend the text well if there are too many unknown words

Freshman 3 4.000 1.0000 5774 1.516 6.484 3.0 5.0 Sophomore 62 3.919 9461 1201 3.679 4.160 1.0 5.0 Junior 19 4.053 9703 2226 3.585 4.520 2.0 5.0 Senior 33 3.939 1.0589 1843 3.564 4.315 2.0 5.0 Other 12 4.417 6686 1930 3.992 4.841 3.0 5.0 Total 129 3.992 9560 0842 3.826 4.159 1.0 5.0

31 I can’t comprehend the text well although my

Freshman 3 3.333 2.0817 1.2019 -1.838 8.504 1.0 5.0 Sophomore 62 3.194 9381 1191 2.955 3.432 1.0 5.0 vocabulary almost covers the entire words in the text

32 I don’t understand the entire sentence if I can’t recognize one rare word in it

Freshman 3 4.000 1.0000 5774 1.516 6.484 3.0 5.0 Sophomore 62 3.145 9206 1169 2.911 3.379 1.0 5.0 Junior 19 3.158 1.3023 2988 2.530 3.786 1.0 5.0 Senior 33 3.515 1.0642 1853 3.138 3.893 1.0 5.0 Other 12 3.417 7930 2289 2.913 3.920 2.0 5.0 Total 129 3.287 1.0170 0895 3.110 3.464 1.0 5.0

33 It takes me a lot of time to process the rare words used with lower level of frequency in the text

Freshman 3 4.333 5774 3333 2.899 5.768 4.0 5.0 Sophomore 62 3.403 8190 1040 3.195 3.611 1.0 5.0 Junior 19 3.632 1.0651 2444 3.118 4.145 2.0 5.0 Senior 33 3.515 1.0642 1853 3.138 3.893 1.0 5.0 Other 12 3.750 7538 2176 3.271 4.229 3.0 5.0 Total 129 3.519 9194 0810 3.359 3.680 1.0 5.0

34 It’s hard for me to understand the text if words are used more variably in the text

Freshman 3 4.000 1.0000 5774 1.516 6.484 3.0 5.0 Sophomore 62 3.323 8449 1073 3.108 3.537 1.0 5.0 Junior 19 3.421 1.2612 2893 2.813 4.029 1.0 5.0 Senior 33 3.364 1.0845 1888 2.979 3.748 1.0 5.0 Other 12 3.167 1.0299 2973 2.512 3.821 2.0 5.0 Total 129 3.349 9894 0871 3.176 3.521 1.0 5.0

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

Another aspect of vocabulary knowledge that results in students’ poor reading comprehension is that a large group of participants sometimes misunderstand the text because they don’t recognize the right meaning of the word that shares different meanings (see Q29’s mean = 3.876 in Table 4.19) This means that the students just know some of the uses of many words sharing different meanings In other words, the students’ poor reading comprehension is caused by the way those students learn vocabulary, that is they did not learn all the meanings of the words that share different meanings However, Q29’s One-Way Anova test result (see Table 4.20) indicates that through time, students will be better at knowing the meanings of the words that share different meanings In particular, there is a steady decrease in average score Q29’s average score that freshmen marked is 4.667 (the highest) whereas the average scores that sophomores, juniors, seniors, and others (students who study longer than 4 years) marked are 3.823, 3.789, 3.609, and 3.600, respectively.The direction of decrease is from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”, meaning that the participants gradually disagree that they sometimes misunderstand the text because they don’t recognize the longer, the students will have less of a problem about misunderstanding the text because they don’t recognize the right meaning of the word that shares different meanings

Problems of Reading Skills due to Vocabulary According to Students’ Living Area

Sum of Squares df Mean

29 I sometimes misunderstand the text because I don’t recognize the right meaning of the word that shares different meanings

30 I can’t comprehend the text well if there are too many unknown words

31 I can’t comprehend the text well although my vocabulary almost covers the entire words in the text

32 I don’t understand the entire sentence if I can’t recognize one rare word in it

33 It takes me a lot of time to process the rare words used with lower level of frequency in the text

34 It’s hard for me to understand the text if words are used more variably in the text

Moreover, as a matter of hypothesis, the researcher of the current study thought that students who live in urban areas may actually have a wider range of vocabulary than those living in rural/remote areas because they might have chances to learn and use English For this reason, the researcher wanted to test whether there is any statistically significant difference due to living area in students’ poor reading comprehension owing to poor vocabulary or not To do this, a One-Way Anova test on vocabulary problems faced by groups of participants divided according to their living area was carried out Then, the result came out not as hypothesized Table 4.21 shows that all significance (Sig.) levels of question items from 29 to 34 are all greater than the 0.05 level of significance Hence, this can infer that the participants both living in urban areas and in rural/remote areas all have reading comprehension problem due to poor vocabulary This means that students living in urban areas have the same range of vocabulary as ones in rural/remote areas do

From the discussion above, it is clear that the majority of English majors at TDMU are facing reading comprehension problems due to poor vocabulary knowledge The cause of poor comprehension is because they have a limited range of vocabulary Even for seniors, they also have this kind of problem because they also have a limited range of vocabulary as much as the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors do In addition, the survey uncovers the truth that the students’ poor reading comprehension is caused by the way the students learn vocabulary, that is they do not learn all the meanings of the words that share different meanings However, this problem is improved when the students learn longer Especially, the participants both living in urban areas and in rural/remote areas all have reading comprehension problem due to poor vocabulary This means that students living in urban areas have the same range of vocabulary as ones in rural/remote areas do

Therefore, from these findings, the researcher suggests that students themselves need to improve their vocabulary by coming up with appropriate vocabulary learning strategies This is absolutely true when 84.2% of teachers at TDMU (see Appendix 5) suggested that students need to develop their source of vocabulary for their reading comprehension improvement However, the role of teachers is indispensable in developing students’ source of vocabulary because in the pre-reading stage, teachers need to provide their students with necessary new words in the text.

In addition to vocabulary, grammar is also an important part in learning any language because it contributes greatly to constructing the message Without grammar, the message is just conveyed in a way that may cause confusion or misunderstanding With this regard, in reading, the learner must have good grammatical knowledge so that they can comprehend the reading text well

Students’ Problems of Reading Skills due to Grammar

35 I have difficulty in understanding the sentence with too many words (long sentence)

36 I have difficulty in understanding the sentence with many clauses (dependent clause and independent clause)

37 I have difficulty in finding subject and main verb in the sentence

38 I have difficulty in finding the head noun in the phrase

39 The more frequent use of pronouns makes the text more challenging to comprehend

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

As a matter of result, the average mean = 3.250, which is a little over the point 3.0 “not decided”, of five questions from 35 to 39 (see Table 4.22) shows that grammatical structures also contribute to comprehension problems that a certain group of participants are facing In other words, not so many English majors at TDMU are facing reading comprehension problems due to the limitation of grammar However, the frequent use of pronouns makes the text more challenging for about half (48%) of the participants to comprehend (see the statistical result of Q39 in Table 4.23) This infers that half of English majors at TDMU are facing the limitation of pronoun usage knowledge, resulting in poor comprehension Following that, long sentences also hinder over 49% of participants’ reading comprehension (see the statistical result of Q35 in Table 4.23) Additionally, the sentence with many clauses causes over 40% of participants’ difficulty in comprehension (see the statistical result of Q36 in Table 4.23)

Frequency Statistics of Students’ Problems of Reading Skills due to Grammar

Strongly disagree Disagree Not decided Agree Strongly agree

35 I have difficulty in understanding the sentence with too many words

36 I have difficulty in understanding the sentence with many clauses

(dependent clause and independent clause)

37 I have difficulty in finding subject and main verb in the sentence 129 9

38 I have difficulty in finding the head noun in the phrase 129 7

39 The more frequent use of pronouns makes the text more challenging to comprehend

Generally, what has been discussed so far in this section shows that not many participants have comprehension problems due to poor grammatical knowledge However, do seniors or students having studied over four years at the university have less comprehension problems due to poor grammatical knowledge than other students, including: freshmen, sophomores, and juniors? This is a question that the researcher wanted to have an answer to For this reason, the researcher carried out a One-Way Anova test on reading comprehension problems due to poor grammatical knowledge faced by groups of participants divided according to their academic levels Then, the result came out not as what the researcher thought Table 4.24 shows that all significance (Sig.) levels of questions from 35 to 39 are all greater than the 0.05 level of significance

It means there is no statistically significant difference among freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors and even students having studied over 4 years at the university in comprehension problems due to poor grammar Hence, this can infer that all participants are experiencing reading the same comprehension problem due to poor grammar

Problems of Reading Skills due to Grammar According to Students’ Academic Levels

Sum of Squares df Mean

35 I have difficulty in understanding the sentence with too many words

36 I have difficulty in understanding the sentence with many clauses

(dependent clause and independent clause)

37 I have difficulty in finding subject and main verb in the sentence

38 I have difficulty in finding the head noun in the phrase

39 The more frequent use of pronouns makes the text more challenging to comprehend

In sum, it can be concluded that the majority of English majors at TDMU do not have reading comprehension problems due to poor grammatical knowledge Moreover, there is no statistically significant difference among freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors and even students having studied over 4 years in the currently-discussed issue The frequent use of pronouns in the reading texts can cause their poor reading comprehension From this result, the researcher recommends that teachers should not focus on teaching grammar in reading classes Instead, they should assist their students in improving vocabulary This is because, when asked “From your experience, what are the activities that you think are useful and motivating in teaching reading comprehension for students? How useful? One teacher (Teacher 3, see Appendix 9) said that “Students’ level is different, so I encourage them to read out of class to improve their vocabulary and reading ability Moreover, the classes are very crowded, which does not give the chance to each student to read and ask questions during the lecture, thus, I give them the opportunity to ask me after the class”

Students’ Problems of Reading Skills due to Text Structures

Strongly disagree Disagree Not decided Agree Strongly agree

40 I rarely pay great attention to the text structure when I read

41 It’s more challenging for me to understand and recall the information if the information is not presented in specific structures such as listing, sequence, or compare/contrast

42 It’s easier for me to understand the text if it has connective words

(e.g., firstly, secondly, because, moreover, etc.)

43 It requires a lot of efforts to infer the relationships among ideas in the text with low cohesion

If being good at vocabulary and grammar helps the readers comprehend every single sentence in the whole text, knowledge about text structures effectively helps them understand the meaning of the whole reading text, or further predict what may happen after the text is finished In other words, text structure knowledge plays a really important role in enhancing reading comprehension Unfortunately, an expected thing seen from the findings is that over 42% of participants (see the statistical result of Q40 in Table 4.25) rarely pay great attention to the text structure when they read despite the fact that they agreed (see Q42’s mean = 3.814 in Table 4.26) that it’s easier for them to understand the text if it has connective words (e.g., firstly, secondly, because, moreover, etc.) and added (see Q43’s mean = 3.736 in Table 4.26) that it requires a lot of efforts to infer the relationships among ideas in the text with low cohesion This leads to the problem that over 45% of participants (see the statistical result of Q41 in Table 4.25) admitted that it’s more challenging for them to understand and recall the information if compare/contrast while only 22.5% of them disagreed with this issue When interviewed, only one student out of ten shared that text structure is the most important in reading because being good at text structure analysis can assist students in dealing with long sentences or complex text structures In particular, when asked “Which is the most important? Why?”, Student 6 said “I’m not sure but I think text structure because

I won’t confuse when facing with long sentences” (see Appendix 8)

Descriptive Statistics of Students’ Problems of Reading Skills due to Text Structures

40 I rarely pay great attention to the text structure when I read

41 It’s more challenging for me to understand and recall the information if the information is not presented in specific structures such as listing, sequence, or compare/contrast

42 It’s easier for me to understand the text if it has connective words (e.g., firstly, secondly, because, moreover, etc.)

43 It requires a lot of efforts to infer the relationships among ideas in the text with low cohesion

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

Problems About Reading Comprehension Strategies

It is undeniable that the use of reading strategies surely enhances readers’ reading comprehension because many researchers such as Grabe and Stoller (2002), Machado (2010) and Karasakaloglu (2012) emphasize that without reading strategies, readers will struggle and continually focus on decoding letters and words instead of focusing on meaning and understanding Thus, a successful and efficient reader is a reader that can use all or most of the reading strategies In this regard, are English majors at TDMU successful and efficient readers? In other words, do they employ reading strategies when they read? To answer these questions, the researcher conducted a survey on English majors’ use of reading strategies, focusing on finding out problems that students may have about skimming, scanning, and note-taking The researcher focused on these features because skimming, scanning, and note-taking are always considered key techniques in reading skills and used popularly Through the survey, the answer to these two questions is that English majors at TDMU are not actually successful and efficient readers In other words, many English majors at TDMU are struggling to employ reading strategies when they work on reading activities

Students’ Use of Reading Strategies According to Their Academic Levels

Activities students often do in reading Groups according to academic levels

Total Freshman Sophomore Junior Senior Other

I start to read right after my teacher gives me a text and asks me to read

I read the text in detail from the beginning till end

I skim the test for topics and main ideas

I scan the text for specific details Responses 2 28 9 18 5 62

I always preview the text structure before I read

I always try to find key nouns in the text before/while I read

I take note of the main points of the text on separate piece of paper while reading

I underline or highlight the main points of the text while reading

I create a mind map of the main points of the text

Table 4.29 shows that up to 76 (58.9%) out of 129 participants start to read right after their teacher gives them a text and asks them to read This can infer that only more than 40% of participants may think about how to work with the reading text after they are given a text and asked to read To get a true picture of this issue, the researcher conducted another survey on what students often do when reading from teachers’ observations And, the results show the same findings In particular, as shown in Table 4.27, 14 (73.7%) out of 19 teachers reported that their students often start to read right after they are given a text and asked to read Unfortunately, despite being thought of as good readers who use all or most of the reading comprehension strategies, up to 21 (63.6%, the highest) out of 33 seniors also start to read right after their teacher gives them a text and asks them to read These findings indicate that a large number of English majors at TDMU currently do not know how to approach reading because they work on reading without thinking about strategies When interviewed, some students also said that they do nothing before they read the text For example, Student 1 said “Read the title or do nothing”, Student 2 “If in class I listen to my teacher If at home I just read”,

Student 3 “Maybe nothing, I just start to read”, Student 4 “I usually read the requirements of the article first and then read the text If it was just a mood post, I would read it.”, and Student 5 “I often read questions before I read the text” (see Appendix 8)

These findings indicate that many students do not know how to approach the reading text They act as passive readers The cause of this problem partly comes from the teachers because when asked “before you start a reading lesson, how do you introduce the reading text?”, they shared: “I just ask them to read the text and try to remember information in the text”, by Teacher 1 and “the first thing I do is write the difficult words and their meanings on the board”, by Teacher 2 Through these findings, it can be seen that the ways the teachers teach make students passive readers

With regard to skills in finding out some kinds of information in the text, it can be said that many English majors at TDMU are good at it As shown in Table 4.29, the skills to get topics or main ideas and get specific details, respectively This result is proved by the finding that up to 59 (45.70%) out of 129 participants (see Table 4.29) always try to find key nouns in the text before/while they read in order to grasp the topic These findings indicate that many English majors at TDMU understand the function of skimming and scanning However, as shown in Table 4.27, only six (31.6%) out of 19 teachers reported that their students skim the test for topics and main ideas; seven (36.8%) out of them shared that their students scan the text for specific details; and only six (31.6%) out of 19 teachers reported that their students always try to find key nouns in the text before/while they read Through these findings, it is seen that there is a difference in skimming and scanning from teachers’ observations and what students reported Yet, which is true? To answer, let us take a more detailed look at what students often do while reading The result is that not always previewing the text structure before reading is a problem that over 73% (0% - 26.4%) of students who participated in the study currently have (see Table 4.29) Meanwhile, the statistical result from the teacher survey also shows the same thing when only six (31.6%) out of 19 teachers (see Table 4.27) see that their students preview the text structure before they read In other words, many of their students do not preview the text structure before they read With regard to academic level, seniors do not show a difference in skimming from other students when only seven (21.20%) out of 33 seniors always preview the text structure before they read These findings indicate that many English majors at TDMU know the functions of skimming and scanning techniques, but they are still struggling to use them This conclusion is clarified by the answer the interviewed students shared to the question

“what do you often do while you read the text?” That is “I scan for the main idea and then carefully read the ideas I wanted to gather information about”, by Student 4 (see

Appendix 8) This infers that students do not know the function of skimming and scanning techniques But, what may cause this problem? Maybe, this is partly from teachers In particular, as shown in Appendix 9, when asked “Do you usually teach students the reading skills and how to use them? Why?”, two teachers shared that: “If they are freshmen, I teach them because I think they didn’t know before But not, I just ask them to scan or skim because they have learned already.”, by Teacher 1 and “No, because they know already.”, by Teacher 2 These data indicate that students’ poor use of reading skills (skimming and scanning) is kind of due to their teachers’ objectiveness

Moreover, in terms of note-taking skill, the statistical result (see Table 4.29) remarkably shows that a very large number (71.3%) of the participants take notes on key information by traditionally underlining or highlighting the main points of the text while reading, which is considered less effective in synthesizing and summarizing the information later on, whereas only 32.6% of the participants take note of the main points of the text on separate piece of paper and 20.2% of the participants create a mind map of the main points of the text Similarly, the findings from the teacher survey show the same result As presented in Table 4.27, 13 (68.4%) out of 19 teachers see that their students often underline or highlight the main points of the text while reading; at the same time, only six (31.6%) out of them reported that their students take note of the main points of the text on separate piece of paper, and just five (26.3%) out of them see their students creating a mind map of the main points of the text while reading Moreover, the most outstanding finding from the student interview is that most students take notes by highlighting or underlining key nouns, main points, or new words For example, Student 3 said “Underline new words, information I think is important, check dictionary” and Student 5 said “I underline the main idea in the body of each paragraph Sometimes there are some words I will underline to look up in the dictionary” However, one student shared “I take note of the main points of the text on separate piece of paper while reading”, by Student 7 (see Appendix 8)

In terms of reading experience, even for seniors, they also do the same in note- taking In particular, up to 25 (75.80%) out of 33 seniors take notes on key information by underlining or highlighting the main points of the text while reading At the same time, only 12 (36.40%) and 7 (21.20%) out of 33 seniors take note of the main points of the text on separate pieces of paper and create a mind map of the main points of the text, respectively The findings show that the way the participants take note of key information is not varied because they cannot create a mind map of the main points of the text or at least take notes on separate pieces of paper, hindering them from summarizing the text later on

All in all, from what has been discussed in this section, a conclusion is drawn that the majority of English majors at TDMU are currently facing a problem in terms of the use of reading strategies Specifically, they do not know how to approach the reading because they work on reading without thinking about strategies; instead, they start to read right after their teacher gives them a text and asks them to read Moreover, they know the functions of skimming and scanning techniques, but they are still struggling to use them In addition, they just use highlighting or underlining techniques to take note of key information in the text, which is considered less effective in synthesizing and summarizing the information in a logical and understandable way Moreover, the survey also shows that despite being thought of as good readers, seniors do not show any differences in the use of reading strategies from other students From this result, the researcher recommends that teachers should assist their students more in utilizing skimming, scanning, and note-taking skills Moreover, teachers should create more opportunities for students to practice using skimming, scanning, and note-taking skills as 68.4% of teachers (see Appendix 5) suggested that students should practice reading strategies more frequently

If reading strategies mainly direct readers to how to read the text efficiently to obtain the kinds of information they want, comprehension strategies assist them in constructing the meaning from text and understanding the meaning of the message that the writers try to convey Therefore, how much the readers may comprehend the text partly depends on the extent to which comprehension strategies are used for comprehending the text Seeing the wrong or inappropriate use of comprehension strategies as a problem of reading skills, the researcher of the current study cannot help wondering whether English majors at TDMU have any problem about the use of comprehension strategies to boost their comprehension If yes, what are those problems?

To ease this concern, the researcher conducted a survey on English majors’ use of comprehension strategies, focusing on finding out problems that students may have about the ways of finding out vocabulary meaning, comprehending and remembering the text These focuses were established because the ways of finding out vocabulary meaning, comprehending and remembering the text contribute considerably to the readers’ comprehension Then, as a matter of result, the descriptive statistics (see Table 4.30) generally show that the majority of participants reported that they make use of comprehension strategies while reading, but they also face some problems

Students’ Use of Comprehension Strategies

45 I use dictionary to find out the meaning of every new vocabulary

46 I always try to guess the meaning of vocabulary from the context

47 I activate my background knowledge to comprehend the text while I read

48 I read, translate and remember the text in

49 I read and remember the text in English 129 1.0 5.0 3.465 9190

50 When I read the last part of the text, I often forget the previous parts

51 I often forget where the information comes from in the text

52 I find it hard to summarize the text 129 1.0 5.0 3.434 1.0595

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

As shown in Table 4.30, the majority of participants reported that they make use of comprehension strategies in order to understand and remember the text while reading

In detail, from Q46’s average score=3.589, which is nearly equal to the point 4.0

“agree”, it can be seen that the majority of participants obtain the meaning of vocabulary by guessing from context In the interview, when asked “What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?”, only two students said that they guessed the meanings of new words For example, as shown in Appendix 8, Students 6 said “I always try to guess the meaning of vocabulary because I don’t have enough time” and Student 10 said “I will try to guess the meaning and new dictionary based on the text” Such findings tell us that the strategy students use to get the meanings of new words is guessing, but they do not use this strategy appropriately, that is guessing from contextual clues This refers to students having problems with guessing Also, in order to comprehend the text, they

Table 4.30) In addition, they also read and remember the text in English (see Q49’s mean = 3.465 in Table 4.30) However, these findings are considerably different from what the teachers who participated in the study reported In particular, only eight (42.1%) and three (15.8%) out of 19 teachers reported that their students try to guess the meaning of vocabulary from the context and read and remember the text in English, respectively (see Table 4.27) Yet, which is true, findings from students or teachers? To answer, let us take a look at the other side that both students and teachers reported

As noticed most remarkably in Table 4.30, Q45’s average score = 3.845, the highest, reveals that the way which a larg number of participants use to understand the meaning of new words is using a dictionary Similarly, a finding from the teacher survey also shows that 12 (63.2%) out of 19 teachers reported that their students use a dictionary to find out the meaning of every new vocabulary (see Table 4.27) These findings prove the fact that students mostly find out the meaning of new words by using a dictionary more than by guessing from the context In the interview (as shown in Appendix 8), when asked “What do you often do while you read the text?”, many students answered that they use a dictionary to check the meaning of new words For example, Student 1 said “I often underline new words, check dictionary after that”, Student 2 shared “Check dictionary, and I think just it”, Student 3 said “Underline new words, information I think important, check dictionary”, Student 10 said “I usually take note of new words and then look up the dictionary to get more vocabulary” Moreover, when asked “What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?”, most of the ten students shared that they get the meanings of new words by mainly using dictionary As shown in Appendix 8, Student 4 said “I’m trying to guess the meaning of words If I can’t guess I often check the meaning in dictionary”, Students 5 said “Of course, I will guess the meaning based on the context of the lesson, then I look up the dictionary to check my judgment because

Problems About Reading Motivation

Out of factors affecting readers’ reading comprehension, interest and motivation are considered very important in developing reading comprehension skills (Dennis, 2008) If readers find the reading material monotonous, they will have a lot of problems concentrating on their comprehension This can lead to a lowering of reading comprehension among readers If the reading material is interesting for readers, they can easily understand it and can remember it clearly Understanding this, EFL teachers motivate their learners through providing interesting reading materials during their class time In keeping with this sense, the researcher of the current study planned to conduct a survey not just into what may cause students’ problems of reading skills but also on what teachers do related to reading materials From what has been found, the researcher compares the results from two surveys in order to get more insights into the problem being studied

Students’ Problems of Reading Skills due to Reading Motivation

53 I have a lot of problems in concentrating on my comprehension of uninteresting topics

54 It’s hard to remember the information if the reading topic is uninteresting

55 I gradually feel demotivated if my teacher keeps providing me with boring topics to read

56 I have problems with reading comprehension because the reading texts are difficult and long

57 I stop reading if there are too many new words in the reading text

58 I feel stressed and less relaxed while I try to remember the text with too much information

59 I’m not interested in the texts that my teacher selects 129 1.0 5.0 3.078 9238

60 I’m more excited to read what I have freedom to choose

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

As shown in Table 4.32, the average score = 3.472 of a total eight questions from

53 to 60 reveals that a large number of participants will have a lot of problems with reading skills if they find the reading material monotonous As most notably seen in Table 4.32, Q60’s mean = 3.783, highest, indicates that a large number of participants feel more excited to read what they have freedom to choose On the contrary, they gradually feel demotivated if their teacher keeps providing them with boring topics to read (see Q55’s mean = 3.659 in Table 4.32) With regard to boring topics, many participants reported that they will have a lot of problems concentrating on their comprehension of uninteresting topics (see Q53’s mean = 3.504) As a matter of consequence, they often feel hard to remember the information if the reading topic is uninteresting (see Q54’s mean = 3.597) Therefore, from what has been found above, it can be concluded that monotonous reading materials make a considerable contribution to students’ poor comprehension problems

The problem of reading skills due to the monotonous reading materials becomes even worse when the researcher interviewed the students and teachers, she found that most of the interviewed students shared that they are interested in reading what they have freedom to choose For example, as shown in Appendix 8, when asked “Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?”, Student 2 said “I choose because the text in the book is boring, I like to read something new like news”, Student 4 said

“Absolutely I prefer to read the text I feel it interest”, Student 5 said “I’m like reading the text I choose I like to read articles with interesting content, not boring”, Student 6 said “I like reading the text I choose because it’s easy for me”, Student 7 said “I’m more excited to read what I have freedom to choose”, and Student 8 said “I prefer to read texts of my own choosing Because for topics I am interested in, I will focus more on reading” However, when interviewing teachers, the researcher found that most teachers do not allow their students to choose the reading texts and even all teachers do not choose the reading materials according to the interests of the students As a matter of illustration, when asked “Do you allow your students to select some of the reading texts?

Why?”, four out of five teachers said “No” They explained that it is impossible to choose the types of reading texts that can satisfy a big number of students in class For the types of reading texts they choose Sometimes, the texts they choose can be unreliable”, Teacher 2 said “To be honest no, not really It is difficult to satisfy everyone”, Teacher 4 said “No because there are a lot of students in my class How can

I do that? It’s impossible”, and Teacher 5 shared “Of course not, because I can’t control what kind of texts they choose Moreover, the texts they choose don’t match my teaching plan” (see Appendix 9) Moreover, when the researcher asked the teachers “Do you choose the reading material according to the interests of the students? Why?”, all teachers said “No” and most of them explained that it is mainly due to the difference in students’ interests or needs For example, Teacher 1 said “No, because I teach a large number of students, I cannot choose the materials according to their interests due to the variety of interests In other words, what is of interest to one student probably will not be to the others” Out of them, one teacher explained that he/she does not know the students’ interests, e.g., Teacher 5 said “No, it’s impossible because I don’t know their interests and maybe their interests are very different” (see Appendix 9) Therefore, through interviews, the researcher concludes that teachers cause students’ problems with reading skills due to the monotonous reading materials

Moreover, the survey also uncovered the fact that a large number of participants often have problems with reading comprehension because the reading texts are difficult and long for them (see Q56’s mean = 3.535 in Table 4.32) In addition, they often feel stressed and less relaxed while they try to remember the text with too much information (see Q58’s mean = 3.581 in Table 4.32) However, surprisingly, they also reported that they do not stop reading if there are too many new words in the reading text (see Q57’s mean = 3.039 in Table 4.32) These findings uncovered another fact that the complexity of the reading text also takes an important part in either motivating or demotivating students’ reading comprehension

When teaching reading, which of the following do you often do?

(You can choose more than one)

N Percent Ask your students to just read the text in the coursebook 6 7.4% 31.6%

Ask your students to read individually 9 11.1% 47.4%

Ask your students to read in group/pair 12 14.8% 63.2%

Ask your students to read for enjoyment 6 7.4% 31.6%

Ask your students to read for assignments 12 14.8% 63.2%

Ask your students to read accurately and slowly, to translate and use dictionary

Ask your students to read fluently and fast, to get main meaning

(not translate) and occasionally use dictionary

Give your students mark bonus as a reward for their good job 11 13.6% 57.9% Ask your students to read the texts that are from other sources 5 6.2% 26.3%

Findings (see Table 4.33) from the survey on teachers’ reading teaching activities shows that very few teachers pay attention to reading materials while teaching In particular, only five (26.3%) out of 19 teachers ask their students to read the texts that are from other sources At the same time, just six (31.6%) out of 19 teachers ask their students to just read the text in the coursebook These two findings reveal that from teachers’ perspective, reading materials are not important However, from students’ perspective, reading materials play an important part in enhancing their reading comprehension

However, as a matter of claim made by the researcher, with a passion for exploring the world through reading, students with high interest in reading may actually pay less attention to what they are going to read In other words, students with high interest in reading will have less problems with reading materials than other students who are interested in speaking, listening, or writing.To explore this issue, a one-way Anova test was performed to examine the differences in the average scores among groups of participants divided according to their favorite skills

Problems of Reading Skills due to Reading Motivation According to Student’s

53 I have a lot of problems in concentrating on my comprehension of uninteresting topics listening 74 3.500 9827 1142 3.272 3.728 1.0 5.0 reading 22 3.591 7341 1565 3.265 3.916 2.0 5.0 writing 8 3.250 1.0351 3660 2.385 4.115 2.0 5.0 speaking 25 3.520 1.0050 2010 3.105 3.935 2.0 5.0 Total 129 3.504 9448 0832 3.339 3.668 1.0 5.0

54 It’s hard to remember the information if the reading topic is uninteresting listening 74 3.608 1.0313 1199 3.369 3.847 1.0 5.0 reading 22 3.773 6119 1305 3.501 4.044 2.0 5.0 writing 8 3.375 7440 2631 2.753 3.997 2.0 4.0 speaking 25 3.480 1.1225 2245 3.017 3.943 1.0 5.0 Total 129 3.597 9724 0856 3.427 3.766 1.0 5.0

55 I gradually feel demotivated if my teacher keeps providing me with boring topics to read listening 74 3.703 9613 1117 3.480 3.925 1.0 5.0 reading 22 3.773 8125 1732 3.412 4.133 2.0 5.0 writing 8 3.375 1.0607 3750 2.488 4.262 2.0 5.0 speaking 25 3.520 1.1225 2245 3.057 3.983 1.0 5.0 Total 129 3.659 9722 0856 3.490 3.828 1.0 5.0

56 I have problems with reading comprehension because the reading texts are difficult and long listening 74 3.608 1.1081 1288 3.351 3.865 1.0 5.0 reading 22 3.682 6463 1378 3.395 3.968 3.0 5.0 writing 8 3.125 8345 2950 2.427 3.823 2.0 4.0 speaking 25 3.320 1.1446 2289 2.848 3.792 1.0 5.0 Total 129 3.535 1.0387 0915 3.354 3.716 1.0 5.0

57 I stop reading if there are too many new words in the reading text listening 74 3.122 1.0974 1276 2.867 3.376 1.0 5.0 reading 22 3.045 1.1742 2503 2.525 3.566 1.0 5.0 writing 8 3.000 1.0690 3780 2.106 3.894 1.0 4.0 speaking 25 2.800 1.0801 2160 2.354 3.246 1.0 5.0 Total 129 3.039 1.0997 0968 2.847 3.230 1.0 5.0

58 I feel stressed and less relaxed while I try to remember the text with too much information listening 74 3.622 1.0297 1197 3.383 3.860 1.0 5.0 reading 22 3.818 5885 1255 3.557 4.079 3.0 5.0 writing 8 3.375 7440 2631 2.753 3.997 2.0 4.0 speaking 25 3.320 1.1075 2215 2.863 3.777 1.0 5.0 Total 129 3.581 9739 0857 3.412 3.751 1.0 5.0

59 I’m not interested in the texts that my teacher selects listening 74 3.149 9606 1117 2.926 3.371 1.0 5.0 reading 22 3.227 7516 1602 2.894 3.561 2.0 5.0 writing 8 2.875 6409 2266 2.339 3.411 2.0 4.0 speaking 25 2.800 1.0000 2000 2.387 3.213 2.0 5.0 Total 129 3.078 9238 0813 2.917 3.238 1.0 5.0

60 I’m more excited to read what I have freedom to choose listening 74 3.932 8331 0968 3.739 4.125 2.0 5.0 reading 22 3.818 6645 1417 3.524 4.113 3.0 5.0 writing 8 3.875 6409 2266 3.339 4.411 3.0 5.0 speaking 25 3.280 1.1733 2347 2.796 3.764 1.0 5.0 Total 129 3.783 9011 0793 3.626 3.940 1.0 5.0

Scale: 1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

According to the descriptive statistics in Table 4.34, generally, there is no significant difference among groups of participants divided according to their favorite skills in problems of reading skills due to reading materials However, there are some notable findings from the One-Way Anova test As shown in Table 4.34, participants with high interest in reading still have problems with reading skills if they find reading texts uninteresting (see Q53’s mean by reading = 3.591 and Q54’s mean by reading 3.773) Especially, out of the participants who gradually feel demotivated if their teacher keeps providing them with boring topics to read, participants with high interest in reading often feel more demotivated than other participants (see Q55’s mean by reading

= 3.773) Moreover, participants who are interested in reading often feel stressed and less relaxed while they try to remember the text with too much information rather than other participants (see Q58’s mean by reading = 3.818) In addition, a very important finding from One-Way Anova test is that participants who are interested in reading feel more excited to read what they have freedom to choose (see Q60’s mean by reading 3.818) rather than the texts that their teacher selects (see Q59’s mean by reading 3.227) Therefore, a conclusion from the One-Way Anova test result is that it is easier for English majors who are especially interested in reading to have problems with reading skills than other students More importantly, they love reading what they choose rather than what their teachers choose This means that what the researcher hypothesized above is wrong

All in all, from what has been discussed about reading motivation, the researcher comes to the conclusion that reading materials play an important role in enhancing problems of reading skills if they find reading materials uninteresting, boring, difficult, and full of information However, teachers do not actually pay great attention to this aspect Moreover, students with high interest in reading also experience problems with reading skills due to poor reading materials as much as other students More importantly, they especially prefer reading what they have chances to choose rather than what their teachers do Therefore, the researchers recommend that when teaching reading, in addition to using reading texts in the course books, teachers should carry out a brief survey to find out the common reading topics that the majority of students are interested in These suggestions match the results from the teacher interview In particular, when asked “From your experience, what are the activities that you think are useful and motivating in teaching reading comprehension for students? How useful?”, two out of five teachers shared that the teachers should give students a chance to choose what they want to read For example, Teacher 1 said “I suggest giving the students the chance to choose the topics and allowing them to read at their pace to make them feel comfortable” Moreover, it is important to choose the topics for students to read For instance, Teacher 4 said “I think the teacher plays an important role in inspiring and increasing the students’ motivation to read and selecting the topic is the key When the topic is interesting, students will enjoy reading the text”.

Problems About Reading Environment

According to Dennis (2008), the environmental conditions also have a considerable impact on the learners who try to read a passage In particular, the readers may have a lot more problems understanding a text in an unorganized environment than those who read in a calm and controlled place If learners are in an unsafe place, they find it difficult to focus on their reading When they are in safe environments, their reading comprehension ability will be better Additionally, readers will lose their concentration in understanding a text when there are noises like televisions or radios.In keeping with this sense, the researcher of the current study planned to find out in which reading environments the students read the most, love reading the most, feel the most comfortable while reading, feel the most uncomfortable while reading, and read with the highest comprehension At the same time, the researcher planned to explore what the teachers often do that can affect their students’ reading comprehension Finally, the researcher compares the results from these two surveys to conclude the extent to which students face problems of reading skills due to reading environments

Relation Between Students’ Favorite Reading Environments and Their Comprehension

You read the most reading the You love most

You feel the most comfortable while reading

You feel the most uncomfortable while reading

You read with the highest comprehension

65 At home (in your own room)

66 At home (in the living room where TV is on or others are talking, laughing, eating, or playing)

67 In library where it’s quite quiet

68 In coffee shop where others are drinking and chatting

69 In the park where it’s quite quiet

70 On the bus/train/plane with a lot of noise

As clearly shown in Table 4.35, the reading environments in which most participants reported that they read the most include: individually in class (38 (29.5%) participants reported), in examination (28 (21.7%) participants said), in-class group work (26 (20.2%) participants shared), in library where it’s quite quiet (26 (20.2%) participants reported), and in bed for relaxing (21 (16.3%) participants) Also, the result bus/train/plane with a lot of noise (11 (8.5%) participants reported), in coffee shop where others are drinking and chatting (14 (10.9%) participants reported), and at home (in the living room where TV is on or others are talking, laughing, eating, or playing) (16 (12.4%) participants said) These findings indicate that English majors at TDMU read in controlled and quiet environments more often than in unorganized and noisy ones

In terms of the favorite place to read, the statistics (see Table 4.35) show that participants prefer reading in quiet places, including: at home (in their own room) (36 (27.9%) participants reported), in bed for relaxing (35 (27.1%) participants reported), and in library where it’s quite quiet (32 (24.8%) participants reported) Especially, very few participants (15 (11.6%)) prefer reading in examinations and in class (both individual work (14%) and group work (14.7%)) These findings indicate that English majors at TDMU love reading in a quiet environment rather than in a controlled and noisy one When interviewing students, the researcher also found the same results In particular, when asked “Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?”, all (100%) of the interviewed students clearly stated “quiet places” because most of them explained that in quiet places, they can focus or concentrate on their reading and read more comprehensively For example, Student 9 said “For me, I like quiet because I can concentrate and think of the best answers” and Student 10 shared “I prefer to read in a quieter place because I can concentrate and read more effectively”

With regard to the comfort while reading, the statistics (see Table 4.35) show that a large number of participants feel the most comfortable when reading in quiet places, including: at home (in their own room) (60 (46.5%) participants reported), in bed for relaxing and in the park where it’s quite quiet (49 (38%) participants reported), and in library where it’s quite quiet (44 (34.1%) participants reported) Although many participants do not love reading in class (individual and group work), they feel comfortable when reading there For example, 45 (34.9%) participants feel the most comfortable when reading in class (individual work), and 46 (35.7%) participants feel the most comfortable when reading in class (group work) On the contrary, a large number of participants feel the most uncomfortable when reading in noisy places For example, 73 (56.6%) participants said that they feel the most uncomfortable when reading on the bus/train/plane with a lot of noise, and 60 (46.5%) participants reported that they feel the most uncomfortable when reading at home (in the living room where

TV is on or others are talking, laughing, eating, or playing) Hence, these finding can explain the reasons why many participants love reading in quiet environments while others hate reading in noisy ones

What has been discussed above shows that English majors at TDMU love reading in quiet places because they feel comfortable when reading in those places However, the main purpose of conducting a survey on reading environments is that the researcher wanted to explore in which reading environments the students read with the highest comprehension because the purpose of reading is comprehension As a matter of result, as remarkably shown in Table 4.35, thirty-seven (28.7%, highest) out of participants read with the highest comprehension when they read in examination, despite the fact that up to 33 (25.6%) out of participants find it uncomfortable when reading in examination Moreover, from teachers’ perspective, many teachers think that their students have high comprehension if they read in examinations In particular, when interviewing teachers, the research found that three out of five interviewed teachers think that their students reading in examinations will have high comprehension because they explained that it is quiet in examinations which most students prefer, and students can concentrate completely For example, as shown in Appendix 9, when asked “Do you think that students reading in examinations will have high comprehension? Why?”,

Teacher 1 said “I’m not sure but I think yes because it’s quiet in exams, so students often have high concentration” and Teacher 2 said “Yes, because I see they stay concentrated all the time” However, some teachers are not so sure that reading in examinations, students can have high comprehension In particular, when interviewing five teachers, the research found that two teachers do not think that their students reading in examinations will have high comprehension because their students often feel nervous or stressed and time-limited For example, Teacher 3 said “No, because they often feel nervous or stressed” and Teacher 4 said “Maybe not because it’s stressful and time- limited” At the same time, 24 (18.6%) participants reported that they read with the highest comprehension when they read in a library where it’s quite quiet Also, 22 (17.1%) participants reported they read with the highest comprehension when they read atmosphere is quiet like an examination, class, or library, English majors at TDMU read with the highest comprehension In contrast, the survey found out that very few students read with the high comprehension if they read in noisy places like at home (in the living room where TV is on or others are talking, laughing, eating, or playing) (8 (6.2%) participants reported) and on the bus/train/plane with a lot of noise (10 (7.8%) participants reported); or if they read uncontrolled environments like in bed for relaxing (9 (7%) participants reported) and at home (in their own room) (12 (9.3%) participants reported)

In brief, from the findings from the student survey, it can be concluded that most English majors at TDMU read comprehensively if they read in organized or controlled environments, e.g., in classes, in examinations, or in libraries, where the atmosphere must be quiet On the contrary, they will have problems about comprehension if they read in unorganized or uncontrolled environments, e.g., at home, in bed room, on public transports, where the atmosphere is noisy or they find it comfortable

Figure 4.2 Teachers’ roles while students read

However, what do teachers often do in their reading classes? Do their teaching activities affect their students’ comprehension? Fortunately, the findings from the teacher survey show that most teachers ask their students to read in organized and controlled environments For example, as shown in Table 4.33, up to 12 (63.2%) out of

19 teachers ask their students to read in group/pair and to read for assignments Also, nine (47.4%) out of 19 teachers ask their students to read individually Especially, very few teachers (6 (31.6%)) ask their students to read for enjoyment To get more insights

Go around, observe and support if necessary

Sit on your desk and keep silent for students to read

Discuss something else with some of them into the issue being studied, the researcher surveyed teachers’ roles while students read The result (see Figure 4.2) is that teachers hardly make any noise while their students read In particular, the survey found that no teacher makes conversation with students while they read Instead, teachers just go around, observe and support if necessary (94.7%) or sit on their desks and keep silent for students to read (5.3%) Therefore, in terms of reading environments, teachers’ teaching activities do not currently affect their students’ reading comprehension This is because most teachers let their students read in controlled environments where, as reported, the students read with the highest comprehension Furthermore, they never do anything that may distract their students while they read Additionally, in the interview, when asked “In class, do you usually arrange your class to read individually or in group? Why?”, one teacher (Teacher 5, see

Appendix 9) shared that “I often ask them to read individually because when they work in a group they chat rather than reading” This finding is absolutely valuable because, from the researcher’s observation, when Vietnamese students work in groups, they often start their personal conversation rather than doing the assigned tasks Therefore, that is why up to 47.4% of teachers ask their students to read individually (see Table 4.33)

In the end, as stated early in this section, in order to conclude the extent to which English majors at TDMU face problems of reading skills due to reading environments, it is necessary to compare the results from student and teacher surveys As found from the teacher survey, very few teachers (6 (31.6%)) ask their students to read for enjoyment, which is considered less effective from students’ perspective in enhancing comprehension Instead, most teachers let their students read in controlled environments where, as reported, the students read with the highest comprehension Furthermore, they never do anything that may distract their students while they read

Therefore, it can be concluded that English majors at TDMU hardly encounter problems with reading skills due to the reading environments that teachers create in class However, if the students read unorganized or uncontrolled environments, e.g., at home, in bed room, on public transports, or where the atmosphere is noisy or they find it comfortable, they will have problems about comprehension Hence, here are valuable findings that teachers should take advantage of when they design reading activities for

CONCLUSION, SUGGESTIONS AND LIMITATIONS

Conclusion

Generally, the thesis “An investigation into the problems of reading skills among English majors: A case study at Thu Dau Mot University” has already reached the research objectives as declared in Chapter 1 After analyzing the data collected from students and teachers at TDMU, the study found out the problems of reading skills that English majors at TDMU currently have In particular, English majors at TDMU currently have many problems in terms of their attitude towards reading comprehension, decoding and fluency, linguistic knowledge (vocabulary and text structures), reading comprehension strategies, and reading motivation However, the survey found out that English majors at TDMU do not currently have problems about their perception of the factors affecting reading comprehension, their grammar knowledge, and the reading environment Moreover, the analysis also shows some statistically significant differences in reading comprehension problems among groups of participants divided according to their living areas, academic levels, and favorite skills

First, English majors at Thu Dau Mot University are facing a problem in terms of attitude, especially emotional attitude, in reading comprehension More notable, even students who are interested in reading skills are also facing this kind of problem Also, the worst thing that the mean comparison result revealed is that the attitude of English majors at Thu Dau Mot University towards reading comprehension changes from positive to negative if they study longer at the university

Second, English majors at Thu Dau Mot University are not currently facing any problem in terms of their perception of the factors affecting their reading comprehension, including: vocabulary, grammar, background knowledge, the complexity of reading texts, reading environment like noises, reading purpose like enjoyment or examination, reading materials, and reading strategies On the contrary, they are well aware of the effects of these factors on their reading comprehension Not surprisingly, the students with high interest in reading have better awareness of the effects of these factors than other participants who are interested in listening, speaking, and writing At the same time, the result of One-Way Anova test (see Table 4.13) also indicates that all English majors including freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors are equally well aware of the factors that affect their reading comprehension.

Third, the majority of English majors at Thu Dau Mot University are not sure whether they are having problems about decoding and fluency or not However, there are still a large number (more than 70%, see Table 4.15) of English majors who confuse words, resulting in misunderstanding This implies that English majors at TDMU sometimes face the problem of recognizing the words with similar spelling Moreover, a relatively large number (approximately 47%, see Table 4.15) of students cannot finish reading within the allotted time, meaning that their reading speed is quite slow More surprisingly, as hypothesized, the students with high interest in reading may have no problems about decoding and reading speed, but the result of One-Way Anova test (see Table 4.18) indicates that all English majors including ones who are interested in reading, writing, speaking, or listening are all facing decoding and fluency problems in their reading comprehension In general, decoding and reading speed are two problems of reading skills that English majors at TDMU are currently facing.

Fourth, the majority of English majors at TDMU are facing reading comprehension problems due to poor vocabulary knowledge The cause of poor comprehension is because they have a limited range of vocabulary Even for seniors, they also have this kind of problem because they also have a limited range of vocabulary as much as the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors do In addition, the survey uncovers the truth that the students’ poor reading comprehension is caused by the way the students learn vocabulary, that is they do not learn all the meanings of the words that share different meanings However, this problem is improved when the students learn longer Especially, the participants both living in urban areas and in rural/remote areas all have reading comprehension problems due to poor vocabulary This means that students living in urban areas have the same range of vocabulary as ones in rural/remote areas comprehension problem due to poor grammatical knowledge Moreover, there is no statistically significant difference among freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors and even students having studied over 4 years in the currently-discussed issue The frequent use of pronouns in the reading texts can cause their poor reading comprehension Finally, the majority of English majors at TDMU rarely pay attention to text structures when they work on reading It is even worse when the result of mean comparison reveals that the seniors, who are thought of as experienced readers because they have done a lot of reading during their time at university, pay less attention to text structures when reading than other groups of students, including: freshmen, sophomores, and juniors And, as a matter of consequences, they often feel challenged to understand and recall the information Therefore, not paying attention to text structures becomes a problem that leads to poor reading comprehension because according to Nuttall (2005), the identification of how the text and ideas are organized makes it easier to interpret difficult sentences

Fifth, the majority of English majors at TDMU are currently facing a problem in terms of the use of reading strategies Specifically, they do not know how to approach the reading because they work on reading without thinking about strategies; instead, they start to read right after their teacher gives them a text and asks them to read Moreover, they know the functions of skimming and scanning techniques, but they are still struggling to use them In addition, they just use highlighting or underlining techniques to take note of key information in the text, which is considered less effective in synthesizing and summarizing the information in a logical and understandable way Moreover, the survey also shows that despite being thought of as good readers, seniors do not show any differences in the use of reading strategies from other students Furthermore, the findings from the student and teacher survey in terms of students’ use of comprehension strategies show that although English majors at TDMU make use of comprehension strategies to reach their comprehension while reading, the comprehension strategies they currently use are considered time-consuming and less effective in enhancing their reading comprehension skills First of all, many English majors at TDMU are still using a dictionary to find out the meaning of new words rather than guessing from the context Moreover, they read, translate and remember the text in

Vietnamese more frequently than in English Additionally, together with the use of traditional way of note-taking that is highlighting or underlining, they often forget where the information comes from in the text, resulting in feeling hard to summarize the text later on In terms of academic levels, the One-Way Anova test results reveal that freshmen have more problems about the use of comprehension strategies, maybe because of the learning habits at high school than other students, especially seniors

Sixth, reading materials play an important role in enhancing students’ comprehension Specifically, English majors at TDMU will have a lot of problems with reading skills if they find reading materials uninteresting, boring, difficult, and full of information However, teachers do not actually pay great attention to this aspect Moreover, students with high interest in reading also experience problems with reading skills due to poor reading materials as much as other students More importantly, they especially prefer reading what they have chances to choose rather than what their teachers do

Seventh, English majors at TDMU hardly face problems with reading skills due to the reading environments that teachers create in class However, if the students read unorganized or uncontrolled environments, e.g., at home, in bed room, on public transports, where the atmosphere is noisy or they find it comfortable, they will have problems about comprehension.

Suggestions

The role of teachers is critical in improving their students’ reading comprehension Therefore, it is vital to provide teachers with guidance on how to assist their students in developing their reading comprehension

First, based on the findings about students’ attitude towards reading, the researcher suggests that in reading class, teachers should consider the students’ emotional attitude, especially seniors’ because the attitude of English majors at Thu Dau Mot University towards reading comprehension changes from positive to negative if they study longer at the university Teachers should make reading activities more varied and interesting Moreover, they should not make their students more stressed because of

Second, from the findings about students’ problems with reading skills due to linguistic knowledge, the researcher recommends that teachers should not focus on teaching grammar in reading classes Instead, they should focus on improving their students’ vocabulary by providing critical new words and information throughout the pre-reading stage This can be accomplished by the use of visual aids related to the topics, the posing of questions to further explore the topics

Third, teachers play a key role in developing their students’ reading speed because if they keep giving their students more time to finish the text, as 68% of teachers (see Figure 4.1) choose this option, their students may not make any effort to finish the reading text within the allotted time To do this, while students read, teachers should assist students in finding the meanings of new words by using explanations, synonyms, antonyms, or body language rather than letting students spend much time looking them up in dictionary Moreover, teachers should provide their students, especially freshmen, with knowledge about every kind of text structures or text types.

Four, based on findings about students’ problems with reading skills due to reading comprehension strategies, the researcher recommends that teachers should assist their students more in utilizing skimming, scanning, and note-taking skills Moreover, teachers should create more opportunities for students to practice using skimming, scanning, and note-taking skills as 68.4% of teachers (see Appendix 5) suggested that students should practice reading strategies more frequently In particular, teachers should design reading activities asking students not to use a dictionary to check the meaning of new words, or asking students to create a mind map of the text’s main ideas

Fifth, the researchers recommend that when teaching reading, in addition to using reading texts in the course books, teachers should carry out a brief survey to find out the common reading topics that the majority of students are interested in These suggestions match the results from the teacher interview In particular, when asked “From your experience, what are the activities that you think are useful and motivating in teaching reading comprehension for students? How useful?”, two out of five teachers shared that the teachers should give students a chance to choose what they want to read For example, Teacher 1 said “I suggest giving the students the chance to choose the topics and allowing them to read at their pace to make them feel comfortable” Moreover, it is important to choose the topics for students to read For instance, Teacher 4 said “I think the teacher plays an important role in inspiring and increasing the students’ motivation to read and selecting the topic is the key When the topic is interesting, students will enjoy reading the text”

Sixth, in terms of reading environments, the researcher recommends that teachers should avoid letting students read the unorganized or uncontrolled environments, etc where the atmosphere is noisy or they find it comfortable because they will have problems about comprehension if they read in those environments

Based on the students’ problems with reading skills, there are plenty of useful ways to help the students to improve their reading skills

First, students must have a good attitude towards reading skills They need to escape from habits that hinder their reading comprehension For example, they should practice creating a mind map of ideas in the text for the purpose of summarization; guessing the meaning of new words from context; or pay attention to text structure when reading

Second, based on the findings about students’ decoding problem, the researcher recommends that students need to pay great attention to the words with similar spelling by developing their vocabulary so that they can easily guess the meaning of similar words according to the clues of context Moreover, students need to increase their reading speed in order to finish the reading text within the allotted time, as 47.4% of teachers (see Appendix 5) recommended

Third, from the findings about students’ problems with reading skills due to linguistic knowledge, the researcher suggests that students themselves need to improve their vocabulary by coming up with appropriate vocabulary learning strategies This is absolutely true when 84.2% of teachers at TDMU (see Appendix 5) suggested that students need to develop their source of vocabulary for their reading comprehension improvement Moreover, students should themselves develop their knowledge about text structures/types of text, as 63.2% of teachers recommended (see Appendix 5) Especially, freshmen are those who should get familiar with text types or text structures

Fourth, in terms of reading comprehension strategies, the researcher suggests that students should practice different types of comprehension strategies, e.g., guessing new words from contextual clues, reading and remembering the text in English, creating mind maps of main ideas, supportive ideas, and facts/examples that the text contains

5.2.3 For Faculty of Foreign Languages and English language Program

Based on the findings about reading motivation, the Faculty of Foreign Languages should regularly update the source of reading materials as well as textbooks for reading subjects so that students will not be demotivated in reading comprehension due to monotonous reading materials

In addition, based on the findings about reading environments, the Faculty and Thu Dau Mot University should build more quiet reading spaces for students because most students love reading in quiet places and they can have high comprehension when they read in such places

More importantly, for curriculum design, teaching reading comprehension strategies should be strongly emphasized in the syllabus of reading subjects because most teachers do not pay attention to this aspect.

Limitations

Basically, the study has already provided some great insights into the problems of reading skills that English majors at TDMU currently have However, I acknowledge that this study has several limitations First of all, it is the restriction of sampling size

In particular, the data for the analysis were from 129 out of 500 English majors at TDMU As calculated in section 3.2.2, the sampling error of 8% in student sample size does not the expected sampling error of 5% Therefore, it could be less enough to reflect the views from the overall population Furthermore, the number of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors participating in this study is not equal, which partly makes the conclusions about the differences among groups of participants divided according to their academic levels less reliable in terms of statistics.

Suggestions for Further Research

For those limitations, the suggestions for future research are that the study should be carried out with a broader sampling of participants In particular, the number of participants must be equal among freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors so that conclusions about statistically significant differences become more reliable Additionally, observation should be also carried out to evaluate the whole process in which students and teachers perform the reading, learning and teaching so that the problems of reading skills that students have can be generalized more reliably Moreover, reading tests should be used as a research instrument to find out exactly the kinds of linguistic problems that students have

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Questionnaire for student

I am collecting the data for the educational research project with the title “An

Investigation into the Problems of Reading Skills among English Majors: A Case Study at Thu Dau Mot University” The project investigates what problems do you have in reading comprehension So, I would like to invite you to participate in this project by answering the following questions Please tick the appropriate response for each question/statement, according to how you feel or how you agree Your answers will be very valuable for my research I am grateful for your contribution

 Urban area  Rural/remote area

4 You live in a family with …?

 good economics status  normal economics status  low economics status

 Freshman  Sophomore  Junior  Senior  Other

6 How much time a day do you spend learning English at home?

7 Which is your favorite skill?

8 Your self-assessed English proficiency is at level …… in CEFR now? (A1, A2: basic user; B1, B2: independent user; C1, C2: proficient user)

Part 2 Students’ attitude towards Reading Comprehension

Read the following statements and mark the number, 1-5, which shows the extent to what you disagree or agree

1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

9 Reading comprehension is necessary for me, an

English major, because I can increase my range of vocabulary, knowledge, and thought

10 I don’t feel bored when I have to practice reading comprehension day after day

11 I don’t get anxious about reading when my reading skill is not good

12 I often read actively to help me improve my thinking and my learning

13 I look forward to reading more kinds of materials in the future

Part 3 Students’ awareness of the factors affecting reading comprehension

Read the following statements and mark the number, 1-5, which shows the extent to what you disagree or agree

1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

14 Vocabulary plays a very important role in reading comprehension

15 Being bad at grammar will limit my reading comprehension

16 My background knowledge helps me understand the text better

17 It is hard for me and takes me more time to comprehend the difficult reading texts

18 I will lose my concentration in understanding the text when there are noises

19 It’s easier to understand the text when I read for enjoyment than for examination

20 It’s easier to understand the texts that I find interesting than ones I’m not

21 It’s easy to understand the text if I have good reading strategies

Part 4 Problem about Decoding and Fluency

Read the following statements and mark the number, 1-5, which shows the extent to what you disagree or agree

1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

22 Sometimes, I misunderstand the sentence/text because I confuse this word with another

23 It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it out loud

24 It’s hard for me to comprehend the text if I read it silently

25 It’s hard for me to recognize the word if I look at word spelling

26 It’s hard for me to recognize the word if I pronounce the word

27 It’s hard to finish reading the text within the allotted time my teacher gives out

28 In class, I’m often one of the last people who finish reading the text

Part 5 Problem about linguistic knowledge

Read the following statements and mark the number, 1-5, which shows the extent to what you disagree or agree

1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

1 2 3 4 5 Student’s vocabulary size and coverage of the entire words in a text

29 I sometimes misunderstand the text because I don’t recognize the right meaning of the word that shares different meanings

30 I can’t comprehend the text well if there are too many unknown words

31 I can’t comprehend the text well although my vocabulary almost covers the entire words in the text

32 I don’t understand the entire sentence if I can’t recognize one rare word in it

33 It takes me a lot of time to process the rare words used with lower level of frequency in the text

34 It’s hard for me to understand the text if words are used more variably in the text

More complex sentences and grammatical structures make the sentences more difficult to be parsed

35 I have difficulty in understanding the sentence with too many words (long sentence)

36 I have difficulty in understanding the sentence with many clauses (dependent clause and independent clause)

37 I have difficulty in finding subject and main verb in the sentence

38 I have difficulty in finding the head noun in the phrase

39 The more frequent use of pronouns makes the text more challenging to comprehend

More cohesive texts are easier to be comprehended

40 I rarely pay great attention to the text structure when I read

41 It’s more challenging for me to understand and recall the information if the information is not presented in specific structures such as listing, sequence, or compare/contrast

42 It’s easier for me to understand the text if it has connective words (e.g., firstly, secondly, because, moreover, etc.)

43 It requires a lot of efforts to infer the relationships among ideas in the text with low cohesion

Part 6 Problem about reading strategies

44 Which of the following activities do you often do when you read? (You can choose more than one)

 I start to read right after my teacher gives me a text and asks me to read

 I read the text in detail from the beginning till end

 I skim the test for topics and main ideas

 I scan the text for specific details

 I always preview the text structure before I read

 I always try to find key nouns in the text before/while I read

 I take note of the main points of the text on separate piece of paper while reading

 I underline or highlight the main points of the text while reading

 I create a mind map of the main points of the text

Part 7 Problem about comprehension strategies

Read the following statements and mark the number, 1-5, which shows the extent to what you disagree or agree

1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

45 I use dictionary to find out the meaning of every new vocabulary

46 I always try to guess the meaning of vocabulary from the context

47 I activate my background knowledge to comprehend the text while I read

48 I read, translate and remember the text in

49 I read and remember the text in English

50 When I read the last part of the text, I often forget the previous parts

51 I often forget where the information comes from in the text

52 I find it hard to summarize the text

Part 8 Problem about reading motivation

Read the following statements and mark the number, 1-5, which shows the extent to what you disagree or agree

1 Strongly disagree 2 Disagree 3 Not decided 4 Agree 5 Strongly agree

53 I have a lot of problems in concentrating on my comprehension of uninteresting topics

54 It’s hard to remember the information if the reading topic is uninteresting

55 I gradually feel demotivated if my teacher keeps providing me with boring topics to read

56 I have problems with reading comprehension because the reading texts are difficult and long

57 I stop reading if there are too many new words in the reading text

58 I feel stressed and less relaxed while I try to remember the text with too much information

59 I’m not interested in the texts that my teacher selects

60 I’m more excited to read what I have freedom to choose

Part 9 Problem about reading environment (learning style)

Read the following situations where you read and mark the number, 1-5 (you can choose more than one number), which shows that:

2 You love reading the most

3 You feel the most comfortable while reading

4 You feel the most uncomfortable while reading

5 You read with the highest comprehension

65 At home (in your own room)

66 At home (in the living room where TV is on or others are talking, laughing, eating, or playing)

67 In library where it’s quite quiet

68 In coffee shop where others are drinking and chatting

69 In the park where it’s quite quiet

70 On the bus/train/plane with a lot of noise

Questionnaire for teacher

I am collecting the data for the educational research project with the title “An

Investigation into the Problems of Reading Skills among English Majors: A Case Study at Thu Dau Mot University” The project investigates what problems do you have in reading comprehension So, I would like to invite you to participate in this project by answering the following questions Please tick the appropriate box or write your response for each question, according to how you feel or how you agree Your answers will be very valuable for my research I am grateful for your contribution

3 How many years have you been teaching English?

4 Did you use to teach reading subjects?

Part 2 Your observation about students’ reading

5 How many of your students finish reading the text within the allotted time?

6 How many of your students never finish reading the text within the allotted time?

7 According to your observation, most of your student read ……

8 What do you do with the students who can’t finish reading the text within the allotted time

 Give them more time to finish

 Stop them and continue your lesson

9 What do you do while your students read?

 Go around, observe and support if necessary

 Sit on your desk and keep silent for students to read

 Discuss something else with some of them

10 When teaching reading, which of the following do you often do? (You can choose more than one)

 Ask your students to just read the text the coursebook

 Ask your students to read individually

 Ask your students to read in group/pair

 Ask your students to read for enjoyment

 Ask your students to read for assignments

 Ask your students to read accurately and slowly, to translate and use dictionary

 Ask your students to read fluently and fast, to get main meaning (not translate) and occasionally use dictionary

 Give your students mark bonus as a reward for their good job

 Ask your student to read the texts that are from other sources

11 In teaching reading, which of the following do you often do? (You can choose more than one)

 Teach new key vocabulary in the reading text

 Let your students discuss the topic before reading

 Instruct your students what to do before, while, and after they read

 Ask your students to skim the text to find out the main idea of the text

 Ask your students to take notes on the main idea together with the supporting information

 Ask your students to summarize the text after they finish reading

 Ask your students to respond to the reading comprehension questions

 Check your students’ reading reports

12 According to your observation, which of the following do your students often do when reading? (You can choose more than one)

 They start to read right after their teacher gives them a text and asks them to read

 They read the text in detail from the beginning till end

 They skim the test for topics and main ideas

 They scan the text for specific details

 They always preview the text structure before they read

 They always try to find key nouns in the text before/while they read

 They take note of the main points of the text on separate piece of paper while reading

 They underline or highlight the main points of the text while reading

 They create a mind map of the main points of the text

 They use dictionary to find out the meaning of every new vocabulary

 They try to guess the meaning of vocabulary from the context

 They read, translate and remember the text in Vietnamese

 They read and remember the text in English

 When they read the last part of the text, they often forget the previous parts

 They remember information, but forget where the information comes from in the text

 They find it hard to summarize the text

Part 4 Your suggestions for students’ reading comprehension improvement

13 According to your observation, which of the following do your students need to improve if they want to develop their reading comprehension? (You can choose more than one)

 Their awareness of the role of reading

 Their background knowledge by reading or experiencing

 Their knowledge about grammatical structures

 Their knowledge about text structures/types of text

 Their practice of reading strategies

Interview Questions for Students

1 How you feel about reading? Why?

2 Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?

3 Which is the most important? Why?

4 Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

5 What do you often do before you read the text?

6 What do you often do while you read the text?

7 What do you often do after you read the text?

8 What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

9 Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

10 Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

Thank you for your time

Interview Questions for Teachers

1 What do you usually do in a reading class? Why?

2 Before you start a reading lesson, how do you introduce the reading text?

3 Do you usually teach students the reading skills and how to use them? Why?

4 What language do you use most in class? What about students? Why?

5 When your students come across unfamiliar words, how do you support them? Why? a) tell them the meaning b) ask them to guess the meaning by using clues from the context c) advise them to consult a dictionary? d) Other means?

6 In class, do you usually arrange your class to read individually or in group? Why?

7 Do you think that students reading in examinations will have high comprehension? Why?

8 Do you choose the reading material according to the interests of the students? Why?

9 Do you allow your students to select some of the reading texts? Why?

10 From your experience, what are the activities that you think are useful and motivating in teaching reading comprehension for students? How useful?

Thank you for your time

Teachers’ suggestions for students’ reading comprehension

Teachers’ suggestions for students’ reading comprehension improvement

Their awareness of the role of reading 12 12.4% 63.2%

Their background knowledge by reading or experiencing 13 13.4% 68.4%

Their knowledge about grammatical structures 12 12.4% 63.2%

Their knowledge about text structures/types of text 12 12.4% 63.2%

Their practice of reading strategies 13 13.4% 68.4%

Transcriptions of Student Interviews

R: How you feel about reading? Why?

S: It’s boring because I think, uhhh…, I’m always silent when I read Sometimes I feel sleepy

R: Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?

S: Yes because without it, I don’t understand the texts

R: Which is the most important? Why?

S: I’m not sure but I think vocabulary because if I know all vocabulary I understand easily

R: Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

S: No, never because it’s too short

R: What do you often do before you read the text?

S: Read the title or do nothing

R: What do you often do while you read the text?

S: I often underline new words, check dictionary after that

R: What do you often do after you read the text?

S: Answer questions in the books

R: What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

S: Check meaning in dictionary because it’s easy for me to understand the text

R: Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

S: I’m not sure because I don’t like reading

R: Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

S: For me, I like quiet because I can focus

That’s enough! Thank you so much for your time!

R: How you feel about reading? Why?

S: It’s interesting because I think it’s good way to improve my vocabulary I learn a lot of vocabulary

R: Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?

S: Yes, of course because they help me understand

S: I think vocabulary because if I know all vocabulary I understand the text easily

R: Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

S: Just sometimes because there are a lot of vocabulary I don’t know

R: What do you often do before you read the text?

S: If in class I listen to my teacher If at home I just read

R: What do you often do while you read the text?

S: Check dictionary, and I think just it

R: What do you often do after you read the text?

S: answer questions or do nothing

R: What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

S: Underline it and check dictionary after

R: Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

S: I choose because the text in the book is boring, I like to read something new like news

R: Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

S: Yeah, I think quiet because I can concentrate

That’s enough! Thank you so much for your time!

R: How you feel about reading? Why?

S: It’s boring, but sometimes interesting because if the topic is interesting, so I like it

R: Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?

S: Yes because without it, I don’t understand the texts

R: Which is the most important? Why?

S: I think vocabulary, but sometimes grammar because it’s easy to read if I have many vocabulary

R: Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

S: Not always but usually because if there are no many new vocabulary

R: What do you often do before you read the text?

S: Maybe nothing, I just start to read

R: What do you often do while you read the text?

S: Underline new words, information I think important, check dictionary

R: What do you often do after you read the text?

S: Answer questions in the books Sometimes nothing

R: What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

S: Check meaning in google translate because it’s fast

R: Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

S: I think both because it’s okay

R: Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

S: Quiet of course because nothing annoy me

That’s enough! Thank you so much for your time!

R: How you feel about reading? Why?

S: I’m feel it so difficult because I’m don’t know a lots of words when I reading, that make me can’t understand

R: Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?

S: Yes course, because all of those things help me understands the meaning when I read

R: Which is the most important? Why?

S: In my opinions the most important is vocabulary because if I don’t know any word I will can’t read any texts

R: Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

S: My answer is no, because I just read when I have free time and finish when I feel enough

R: What do you often do before you read the text?

S: I’m often read the title first

R: What do you often do while you read the text?

S: I scan for the main idea and then carefully read the ideas I wanted to gather information about

R: What do you often do after you read the text?

S: Summarize the main ideas of the text and memorize the necessary information in the text

R: What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

S: I’m try to guess meaning of words, If I can’t guess I often check the meaning in dictionary

R: Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

S: Absolutely I prefer to read the text I feel it interest

R: Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

S: I don’t like the noisy places I like to reading in quiet because I can focus on my reading

That’s enough! Thank you so much for your time!

R: How you feel about reading? Why?

S: I feel that sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't like it Because it depends on the content of the reading whether it is interesting or not

If the content is not good, I will just skim

R: Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?

S: Yes, because those are the basic elements of a good reading

R: Which is the most important? Why?

S: I think they're already important elements, so they're all necessary But in my opinion, vocabulary is the most important, because it takes a rich vocabulary to create a reading that attracts readers

R: Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

S: No, the reading is too long and the time allotted for it is too short so I'll skim it

R: What do you often do before you read the text?

S: I usually read the requirements of the article first and then read the text If it was just a mood post, I would read it

R: What do you often do while you read the text?

S: I underline the main idea in the body of each paragraph Sometimes there are some words I will underline to look up in the dictionary

R: What do you often do after you read the text?

S: I will rely on the keywords of the question and the reading passage to answer the requirements of the article

R: What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

S: Of course, I will guess the meaning based on the context of the lesson, then I look up the dictionary to check my judgment because I find this method very effective

R: Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

S: I’m like reading the text I choose I like to read articles with interesting content, not boring

R: Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

S: With me, I like reading in quiet places Because I want to focus on reading

That’s enough! Thank you so much for your time!

R: How you feel about reading? Why?

S: I feel stressed because there are too many new words in the reading text

R: Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?

S: Yes because without it, I don’t understand the texts

R: Which is the most important? Why?

S: I’m not sure but I think text structure because I won’t confuse when facing with long sentences

R: Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

S: No, because I have difficulty in understanding the sentence with too many words

R: What do you often do before you read the text?

S: I often preview the text structure before I read

R: What do you often do while you read the text?

S: I often try to find key nouns in the text

R: What do you often do after you read the text?

S: I will learn by heart new words

R: What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

S: I always try to guess the meaning of vocabulary because I don’t have enough time

R: Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

S: I like reading the text I choose because it’s easy for me

R: Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

S: I like quiet because I feel comfortable while reading

That’s enough! Thank you so much for your time!

S: It’s boring because It is hard for me and takes me more time to comprehend the difficult reading texts

R: Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?

S: Yes because without it, I don’t understand the texts

R: Which is the most important? Why?

S: I think grammar because I don’t understand the entire sentence if I can’t recognize one rare word in it

R: Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

S: No, because I have difficulty in finding subject and main verb in the sentence

R: What do you often do before you read the text?

S: I skim the text for topics and main ideas

R: What do you often do while you read the text?

S: I take note of the main points of the text on separate piece of paper while reading

R: What do you often do after you read the text?

S: I create a mind map of the main points of the text

R: What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

S: I use dictionary to find out the meaning of every new vocabulary

R: Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

S: I’m more excited to read what I have freedom to choose

R: Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

S: I like quiet places because I can reading more effectively

That’s enough! Thank you so much for your time!

R: How you feel about reading? Why?

S: I am not interested in reading I usually don't concentrate on reading and feel very sleepy while reading

R: Do you think vocabulary, grammar, and text structure are important in reading? Why?

S: Yes, because when I have the vocabulary, grammar and understand the text structure, I can read and understand the content of the text

R: Which is the most important? Why?

S: In my opinion, vocabulary is the most important because in order to understand the text, it is necessary to understand what most of the words mean

R: Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

S: It also depends on the reading Readings that use a lot of difficult specialized words take a long time for me to understand So I often overread the allotted time

R: What do you often do before you read the text?

S: I often read the title and opening sentence

R: What do you often do while you read the text?

S: I often highlight new words, analyze grammar, and look up new words in the dictionary

R: What do you often do after you read the text?

R: What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

S: Look up the dictionary and memorize it so that I can understand the text easily

R: Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

S: I prefer to read texts of my own choosing Because for topics I am interested in, I will focus more on reading

R: Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

S: I like a quiet place to It was so noisy that I couldn't concentrate on reading

That’s enough! Thank you so much for your time!

R: How you feel about reading? Why?

S: In my opinion, I feel very bored when reading books Because I can't focus on books for a long time Although reading books brings me more knowledge, I choose to listen to music to relax after stressful studying hours

R: Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?

S: I think vocabulary, grammar, and text structure are only partially useful for reading It is more useful for writing because when I read I just need to understand the key-word and some vocabulary I can understand the reading

S: I think vocabulary is the most important because when I have vocabulary it helps me to understand the text well

R: Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

S: I never finished reading the article before the allotted time because my reading skills are not good and the time is too short

R: What do you often do before you read the text?

S: I often read questions before I read the text

R: What do you often do while you read the text?

S: I often underline keywords, new words, and notes in my notebook after that

R: What do you often do after you read the text?

S: I answer questions in the books

R: What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

S: I guess after that I will check the meaning in the dictionary Because

I think if I guess I can remember its longer

R: Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

S: I like reading the text when study because a teacher will help me fix my pronunciation when I read in front of the teacher

R: Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

S: For me, I like quiet because I can concentrate and think of the best answers

That’s enough! Thank you so much for your time!

R: How you feel about reading? Why?

S: I find it quite interesting because when I look to the book as a quiet way of entertainment, I have the focus to think about all the work

R: Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?

S: Yes, because without it, I can't understand clearly the text

R: Which is the most important? Why?

S: I think vocabulary because limited vocabulary will hinder successful communication, we will not be able to use the structures and grammar we may have learned to communicate easily

R: Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

S: No Because I can't because I can't read them all in too short a time

R: What do you often do before you read the text?

S: I look at the article overview and read the title

R: What do you often do while you read the text?

S: I usually take note of new words and then look up the dictionary to get more vocabulary

R: What do you often do after you read the text?

S: Summarize the main idea of the passage

R: What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

S: I will try to guess the meaning and new dictionary based on the text

R: Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

S: I prefer to read books on my own terms Because I like to read what I like

R: Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

S: I prefer to read in a quieter place because I can concentrate and read more effectively

That’s enough! Thank you so much for your time!

Transcriptions of Teacher Interview

R: What do you usually do in a reading class? Why?

T: I often teach new vocabulary in the text before I ask them to read because I think it’s easy for them to understand the text Sometimes I ask them some questions about the topic

R: Before you start a reading lesson, how do you introduce the reading text?

T: I just ask them to read the text and try to remember information in the text

R: Do you usually teach students the reading skills and how to use them?

T: If they are freshmen, I teach them because I think they don’t know before But not, I just ask them to scan or skim because they have learned already

R: What language do you use most in class? What about students? Why?

T: English because it’s better to improve their listening skills and they can start new way to learn English About students, they always try to use English but sometimes they speak Vietnamese when they don’t have vocabulary to speak

R: When your students come across unfamiliar words, how do you support them? tell them the meaning, ask them to guess the meaning by using clues from the context, advise them to consult a dictionary, or else? Why?

T: I usually advise the students to use an English-English Oxford

Dictionary to get many benefits First, they can learn the pronunciation from the transcription provided Second, it tells them what type of word it is: a verb, a noun, an adjective …etc Third, students can enrich their vocabulary when they learn the meaning in English Fourth, it can improve their English in general as it gives some examples for using words in different contexts

R: In class, do you usually arrange your class to read individually or in group? Why?

T: No, because most of the time I use whole class discussions because the arrangement of many classrooms does not support moving the students around as the seats are long benches fitted to the floor in rows, the classes are too large and the time is too limited

R: Do you think that students reading in examinations will have high comprehension? Why?

T: I’m not sure but I think yes because it’s quiet in exams, so students often have high concentration

R: Do you choose the reading material according to the interests of the students? Why?

T: No, because I teach big numbers of students, I cannot choose the materials according to their interests due to the variety of interests In other words, what is of interest to one student probably will not be to the others

R: Do you allow your students to select some of the reading texts? Why?

T: No, because I teach big numbers of students, I cannot control the types of reading texts they choose Sometimes, the texts they choose can bee unreliable

R: From your experience, what are the activities that you think are useful and motivating in teaching reading comprehension for students? How useful?

T: I suggest giving the students the chance to choose the topics and allowing them to read at their pace to make them feel comfortable

R: What do you usually do in a reading class? Why?

T: I read the text loudly to enable students to know the correct pronunciation of the new words after explaining their meanings After asking students to read the text one by one, I try to check their comprehension by asking some questions I ask them to work in groups of different levels to enable them to learn from each other during answering the questions Sometimes I divide them into two teams challenging each other to make them remember the new words

R: Before you start a reading lesson, how do you introduce the reading text?

T: I often start the reading class by discussing the topic of the new text

R: Do you usually teach students the reading skills and how to use them?

T: No, because they know already

R: What language do you use most in class? What about students? Why?

T: I try my best to speak in English to encourage students to use it but I use Vietnamese too in order to overcome comprehension problems and save time

R: When your students come across unfamiliar words, how do you support them? tell them the meaning, ask them to guess the meaning by using clues from the context, advise them to consult a dictionary, or

T: To save time, I translate new words into Vietnamese

R: In class, do you usually arrange your class to read individually or in group? Why?

T: Because of the large number of students in each class, I usually tend to arrange my classes in one big square or circle when we discuss reading texts

R: Do you think that students reading in examinations will have high comprehension? Why?

T: Yes, because I see they stay concentrated all the time

R: Do you choose the reading material according to the interests of the students? Why?

T: No, because they have different interests

R: Do you allow your students to select some of the reading texts? Why? T: To be honest no, not really It is difficult to satisfy everyone

R: From your experience, what are the activities that you think are useful and motivating in teaching reading comprehension for students? How useful?

T: I think it depends on the situation With small groups, I would suggest group and pair work where learners work on tasks This can be useful for improving learners’ comprehension and speaking skills, and for supporting their involvement and boosting their motivation

R: What do you usually do in a reading class? Why?

T: After I read the passage, I ask the students to read it then answer the related questions and after that I teach them the grammatical rules used in the text

R: Before you start a reading lesson, how do you introduce the reading text?

T: I give the students a brief overview about the text

R: Do you usually teach students the reading skills and how to use them?

T: Yes, for example, I show them how to skim the text for general meaning because I see that they are not good at using reading skills

R: What language do you use most in class? What about students? Why? T: Sometimes I use the first language to explain some difficult words

R: When your students come across unfamiliar words, how do you support them? tell them the meaning, ask them to guess the meaning by using clues from the context, advise them to consult a dictionary, or else? Why?

T: I try to use visual aids; something in the class or I draw on the board when it is possible

R: In class, do you usually arrange your class to read individually or in group? Why?

T: I sometimes do this but not for the whole lecture because it is difficult to control the large number of students

R: Do you think that students reading in examinations will have high comprehension? Why?

T: No, because they often feel nervous or stressed

R: Do you choose the reading material according to the interests of the students? Why?

T: Of course not, because it’s hard to satisfy their needs

R: Do you allow your students to select some of the reading texts? Why?

T: It is according to the students’ level range In other words, when they are at the same level, I may sometimes allow them to decide what to read

R: From your experience, what are the activities that you think are useful and motivating in teaching reading comprehension for students? How useful?

T: Students’ level is different, so I encourage them to read out of class to improve their vocabulary and reading ability Moreover, the classes are very crowded, which does not give the chance to each student to read and ask questions during the lecture, thus, I give them the opportunity to ask me after the class

R: What do you usually do in a reading class? Why?

T: I usually ask my students to read the text and do the exercises

R: Before you start a reading lesson, how do you introduce the reading text?

T: The first thing I do is writing the difficult words and their meanings on the board

R: Do you usually teach students the reading skills and how to use them?

T: Yes, because they are important and helpful

R: What language do you use most in class? What about students? Why? T: English almost the time So do students

R: When your students come across unfamiliar words, how do you support them? tell them the meaning, ask them to guess the meaning by using clues from the context, advise them to consult a dictionary, or else? Why?

T: I give explanations, synonyms, antonyms and sometimes facial or body gestures However for abstract words, I usually use translation

R: In class, do you usually arrange your class to read individually or in group? Why?

T: Yes, my students sit in rows in one big group

R: Do you think that students reading in examinations will have high comprehension? Why?

T: May be not because it’s stressful and time-limited

R: Do you choose the reading material according to the interests of the students? Why?

T: No, but I want because I think they will be interested in the topics they like

R: Do you allow your students to select some of the reading texts? Why?

T: No because there are a lot of students in my class How can I do that? It’s impossible

R: From your experience, what are the activities that you think are useful and motivating in teaching reading comprehension for students? How useful?

T: I think the teacher plays an important role in inspiring and increasing the students’ motivation to read and selecting the topic is the key When the topic is interesting, students will enjoy reading the text

R: What do you usually do in a reading class? Why?

T: Teach students new vocabulary, ask them to read, do exercise and translate the texts

R: Before you start a reading lesson, how do you introduce the reading text?

T: I start my lesson usually by asking the students questions that make them guess what the new text is going to be about, but if the students do not have any idea about the topic, I introduce it directly by writing the title on the board

R: Do you usually teach students the reading skills and how to use them?

T: Yes, I often show them how to scan the text for information

R: What language do you use most in class? What about students? Why? T: English because it helps improve student’s listening skills, but sometimes I speak Vietnamese when I teach vocabulary

R: When your students come across unfamiliar words, how do you support them? tell them the meaning, ask them to guess the meaning by using clues from the context, advise them to consult a dictionary, or else? Why?

T: I use affixation knowledge; I analyse words and highlight the prefixes and suffixes to make it easier for students to guess the meaning

R: In class, do you usually arrange your class to read individually or in group? Why?

T: I often ask them to read individually because when they work in group they chat rather than reading

R: Do you think that students reading in examinations will have high comprehension? Why?

T: Maybe yes, because I see they often get high score in reading tests

R: Do you choose the reading material according to the interests of the students? Why?

T: No, it’s impossible because I don’t know their interests and maybe their interests are very different

R: Do you allow your students to select some of the reading texts? Why?

T: Of course not, because I can’t control what kind of texts they choose Moreover, the texts they choose don’t match my teaching plan

R: From your experience, what are the activities that you think are useful and motivating in teaching reading comprehension for students? How useful?

Results of Student Interviews

1 How you feel about reading? Why?

S1 It’s boring because I think, uhhh…, I’m always silent when I read Sometimes I feel sleepy

S2 It’s interesting because I think it’s good way to improve my vocabulary I learn a lot of vocabulary

S3 It’s boring, but sometimes interesting because if the topic is interesting, so I like it

S4 I’m feel it so difficult because I’m don’t know a lots of words when I reading, that make me can’t understand

S5 I feel that sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't like it Because it depends on the content of the reading whether it is interesting or not If the content is not good, I will just skim

S6 I feel stressed because there are too many new words in the reading text

S7 It’s boring because It is hard for me and takes me more time to comprehend the difficult reading texts

S8 I am not interested in reading I usually don't concentrate on reading and feel very sleepy while reading

S9 In my opinion, I feel very bored when reading books Because I can't focus on books for a long time Although reading books brings me more knowledge, I choose to listen to music to relax after stressful studying hours

S10 I find it quite interesting because when I look to the book as a quiet way of entertainment, I have the focus to think about all the work

2 Do you think vocabulary, grammar and text structure are important in reading? Why?

S1 Yes because without it, I don’t understand the texts

S2 Yes, of course because they help me understand

S3 Yes because without it, I don’t understand the texts

S4 Yes course, because all of those things help me understands the meaning when I read

S5 Yes, because those are the basic elements of a good reading

S6 Yes because without it, I don’t understand the texts

S7 Yes because without it, I don’t understand the texts

S8 Yes, because when I have the vocabulary, grammar and understand the text structure, I can read and understand the content of the text

S9 I think vocabulary, grammar, and text structure are only partially useful for reading It is more useful for writing because when I read I just need to understand the key-word and some vocabulary I can understand the reading

S10 Yes, because without it, I can't understand clearly the text

3 Which is the most important? Why?

S1 I’m not sure but I think vocabulary because if I know all vocabulary I understand easily

S2 I think vocabulary because if I know all vocabulary I understand the text easily

S3 I think vocabulary, but sometimes grammar because it’s easy to read if I have many vocabulary

S4 In my opinions the most important is vocabulary because if I don’t know any word

I will can’t read any texts

S5 I think they're already important elements, so they're all necessary But in my opinion, vocabulary is the most important, because it takes a rich vocabulary to create a reading that attracts readers

S6 I’m not sure but I think text structure because I won’t confuse when facing with long sentences

S7 I think grammar because I don’t understand the entire sentence if I can’t recognize one rare word in it

S8 In my opinion, vocabulary is the most important because in order to understand the text, it is necessary to understand what most of the words mean

S9 I think vocabulary is the most important because when I have vocabulary it helps me to understand the text well

S10 I think vocabulary because limited vocabulary will hinder successful communication, we will not be able to use the structures and grammar we may have learned to communicate easily

4 Do you finish reading the text within the allotted time? Why?

S1 No, never because it’s too short

S2 Just sometimes because there are a lot of vocabulary I don’t know

S3 Not always but usually because if there are no many new vocabulary I can finish on time

S4 My answer is no, because I just read when I have free time and finish when I feel enough

S5 No, the reading is too long and the time allotted for it is too short so I'll skim it

S6 No, because I have difficulty in understanding the sentence with too many words

S7 No, because I have difficulty in finding subject and main verb in the sentence

S8 It also depends on the reading Readings that use a lot of difficult specialized words take a long time for me to understand So I often overread the allotted time

S9 I never finished reading the article before the allotted time because my reading skills are not good and the time is too short

S10 No Because I can't because I can't read them all in too short a time

5 What do you often do before you read the text?

S1 Read the title or do nothing

S2 If in class I listen to my teacher If at home I just read

S3 Maybe nothing, I just start to read

S4 I’m often read the title first

S5 I usually read the requirements of the article first and then read the text If it was just a mood post, I would read it

S6 I often preview the text structure before I read

S7 I skim the text for topics and main ideas

S8 I often read the title and opening sentence

S9 I often read questions before I read the text

S10 I look at the article overview and read the title

6 What do you often do while you read the text?

S1 I often underline new words, check dictionary after that

S2 Check dictionary, and I think just it

S3 Underline new words, information I think important, check dictionary

S4 I scan for the main idea and then carefully read the ideas I wanted to gather information about

S5 I underline the main idea in the body of each paragraph Sometimes there are some words I will underline to look up in the dictionary

S6 I often try to find key nouns in the text

S7 I take note of the main points of the text on separate piece of paper while reading

S8 I often highlight new words, analyze grammar, and look up new words in the dictionary

S9 I often underline keywords, new words, and notes in my notebook after that

S10 I usually take note of new words and then look up the dictionary to get more vocabulary

7 What do you often do after you read the text?

S1 Answer questions in the books

S2 answer questions or do nothing

S3 Answer questions in the books Sometimes nothing

S4 Summarize the main ideas of the text and memorize the necessary information in the text

S5 I will rely on the keywords of the question and the reading passage to answer the requirements of the article

S6 I will learn by heart new words

S7 I create a mind map of the main points of the text

S9 I answer questions in the books

S10 Summarize the main idea of the passage

8 What do you often do when you meet new words? Why?

S1 Check meaning in dictionary because it’s easy for me to understand the text

S2 Underline it and check dictionary after

S3 Check meaning in google translate because it’s fast

S4 I’m try to guess meaning of words, If I can’t guess I often check the meaning in dictionary

S5 Of course, I will guess the meaning based on the context of the lesson, then I look up the dictionary to check my judgment because I find this method very effective

S6 I always try to guess the meaning of vocabulary because I don’t have enough time

S7 I use dictionary to find out the meaning of every new vocabulary

S8 Look up the dictionary and memorize it so that I can understand the text easily

S9 I guess after that I will check the meaning in the dictionary Because I think if I guess I can remember its longer

S10 I will try to guess the meaning and new dictionary based on the text

9 Do you like reading the text you choose or your teacher do?

S1 I’m not sure because I don’t like reading

S2 I choose because the text in the book is boring, I like to read something new like news

S3 I think both because it’s okay

S4 Absolutely I prefer to read the text I feel it interest

S5 I’m like reading the text I choose I like to read articles with interesting content, not boring

S6 I like reading the text I choose because it’s easy for me

S7 I’m more excited to read what I have freedom to choose

S8 I prefer to read texts of my own choosing Because for topics I am interested in, I will focus more on reading

S9 I like reading the text when study because a teacher will help me fix my pronunciation when I read in front of the teacher

S10 I prefer to read books on my own terms Because I like to read what I like

10 Do you like reading in quiet or noisy places? Why?

S1 For me, I like quiet because I can focus

S2 Yeah, I think quiet because I can concentrate

S3 Quiet of course because nothing annoy me

S4 I don’t like the noisy places I like to reading in quiet because I can focus on my reading

S5 With me, I like reading in quiet places Because I want to focus on reading

S6 I like quiet because I feel comfortable while reading

S7 I like quiet places because I can reading more effectively

S8 I like a quiet place to It was so noisy that I couldn't concentrate on reading

S9 For me, I like quiet because I can concentrate and think of the best answers

S10 I prefer to read in a quieter place because I can concentrate and read more effectively.

Results of Teacher Interviews

1 What do you usually do in a reading class? Why?

T1 I often teach new vocabulary in the text before I ask them to read because I think it’s easy for them to understand the text Sometimes I ask them some questions about the topic

T2 I read the text loudly to enable students to know the correct pronunciation of the new words after explaining their meanings After asking students to read the text one by one, I try to check their comprehension by asking some questions I ask them to work in groups of different levels to enable them to learn from each other during answering the questions Sometimes I divide them into two teams challenging each other to make them remember the new words

T3 After I read the passage, I ask the students to read it then answer the related questions and after that I teach them the grammatical rules used in the text

T4 I usually ask my students to read the text and do the exercises

T5 Teach students new vocabulary, ask them to read, do exercise and translate the texts

2 Before you start a reading lesson, how do you introduce the reading text?

T1 I just ask them to read the text and try to remember information in the text

T2 I often start the reading class by discussing the topic of the new text

T3 I give the students a brief overview about the text

T4 The first thing I do is writing the difficult words and their meanings on the board

T5 I start my lesson usually by asking the students questions that make them guess what the new text is going to be about, but if the students do not have any idea about the topic, I introduce it directly by writing the title on the board

3 Do you usually teach students the reading skills and how to use them? Why?

T1 If they are freshmen, I teach them because I think they don’t know before But not,

I just ask them to scan or skim because they have learned already

T2 No, because they know already

T3 Yes, for example, I show them how to skim the text for general meaning because I see that they are not good at using reading skills

T4 Yes, because they are important and helpful

T5 Yes, I often show them how to scan the text for information

4 What language do you use most in class? What about students? Why?

T1 English because it’s better to improve their listening skills and they can start new way to learn English About students, they always try to use English but sometimes they speak Vietnamese when they don’t have vocabulary to speak

T2 I try my best to speak in English to encourage students to use it but I use Vietnamese too in order to overcome comprehension problems and save time

T3 Sometimes I use the first language to explain some difficult words

T4 English almost the time So do students

T5 English because it helps improve student’s listening skills, but sometimes I speak Vietnamese when I teach vocabulary

5 When your students come across unfamiliar words, how do you support them? tell them the meaning, ask them to guess the meaning by using clues from the context, advise them to consult a dictionary, or else? Why?

T1 I usually advise the students to use an English-English Oxford Dictionary to get many benefits First, they can learn the pronunciation from the transcription provided Second, it tells them what type of word it is: a verb, a noun, an adjective

…etc Third, students can enrich their vocabulary when they learn the meaning in English Fourth, it can improve their English in general as it gives some examples for using words in different contexts

T2 To save time, I translate new words into Vietnamese

T3 I try to use visual aids; something in the class or I draw on the board when it is possible

T4 I give explanations, synonyms, antonyms and sometimes facial or body gestures However for abstract words, I usually use translation

T5 I use affixation knowledge; I analyse words and highlight the prefixes and suffixes

6 In class, do you usually arrange your class to read individually or in group? Why?

T1 No, because most of the time I use whole class discussions because the arrangement of many classrooms does not support moving the students around as the seats are long benches fitted to the floor in rows, the classes are too large and the time is too limited

T2 Because of the large number of students in each class, I usually tend to arrange my classes in one big square or circle when we discuss reading texts

T3 I sometimes do this but not for the whole lecture because it is difficult to control the large number of students

T4 Yes, my students sit in rows in one big group

T5 I often ask them to read individually because when they work in group they chat rather than reading

7 Do you think that students reading in examinations will have high comprehension? Why?

T1 I’m not sure but I think yes because it’s quiet in exams, so students often have high concentration

T2 Yes, because I see they stay concentrated all the time

T3 No, because they often feel nervous or stressed

T4 May be not because it’s stressful and time-limited

T5 Maybe yes, because I see they often get high score in reading tests

8 Do you choose the reading material according to the interests of the students? Why?

T1 No, because I teach big numbers of students, I cannot choose the materials according to their interests due to the variety of interests In other words, what is of interest to one student probably will not be to the others

T2 No, because they have different interests

T3 Of course not, because it’s hard to satisfy their needs

T4 No, but I want because I think they will be interested in the topics they like

T5 No, it’s impossible because I don’t know their interests and maybe their interests are very different

9 Do you allow your students to select some of the reading texts? Why?

T1 No, because I teach big numbers of students, I cannot control the types of reading texts they choose Sometimes, the texts they choose can bee unreliable

T2 To be honest no, not really It is difficult to satisfy everyone

T3 It is according to the students’ level range In other words, when they are at the same level, I may sometimes allow them to decide what to read

T4 No because there are a lot of students in my class How can I do that? It’s impossible

T5 Of course not, because I can’t control what kind of texts they choose Moreover, the texts they choose don’t match my teaching plan

10 From your experience, what are the activities that you think are useful and motivating in teaching reading comprehension for students? How useful?

T1 I suggest giving the students the chance to choose the topics and allowing them to read at their pace to make them feel comfortable

T2 I think it depends on the situation With small groups, I would suggest group and pair work where learners work on tasks This can be useful for improving learners’ comprehension and speaking skills, and for supporting their involvement and boosting their motivation

T3 Students’ level is different, so I encourage them to read out of class to improve their vocabulary and reading ability Moreover, the classes are very crowded, which does not give the chance to each student to read and ask questions during the lecture, thus, I give them the opportunity to ask me after the class

T4 I think the teacher plays an important role in inspiring and increasing the students’ motivation to read and selecting the topic is the key When the topic is interesting, students will enjoy reading the text

T5 I hold competitions; I ask them to work in groups and answer the questions after the text The winning group is the one with the best answers in the shortest time They enjoy it

THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM Independence - Freedom - Happiness

Title: An Investigation into the Problems of Reading Skills Among English Majors: A Case

Study at Thu Dau Mot University

Student’s Name: Ngô Hương Hoa Supervisor: Tran Thanh Du, PhD

Examiner: Lê Thị Thanh, PhD Role: Second Reader

1 Study significance, scientific and practical implications

As the title denotes, the thesis starts with a specific aim at investigating the challenges that face the English-majored students during their learning reading skill The study adopts the quantitative and qualitative data among 129 students and 19 teachers The objectives are challenging but they made significant academic and practical ELT implications Ms Hoa’s study contributes significantly to one of the important skills required for English majors at Thu Dau Mot University in the field of English Language Teaching: Reading Skill

2 Appropriateness of the research topic

In general, the thesis, with 103 pages of the main content, 10 pages for the reference list and

40 pages for Appendixes attached necessary documents, has proved how the research can fit the scope of English language teaching

To find the answer for the three research questions, Huong Hoa collected the data by the form of questionnaires from 129 English major students and 19 teachers Another research instrument of the study is the interview conducted among 10 students and 5 teachers And the results of the study could find out the English majors at Thu Dau Mot University have encounter problems of reading skills in terms of their attitude, decoding, fluency, linguistic knowledge, reading strategies and motivation