skkn cấp tỉnh instruct students to improve reading comprehension skill through reading fill and comprehension exercises in ba thuoc high school

Therefore, Students who want to improve their grade in English exams have no other way but to improve their reading comprehension skills, and also do better in English tests.. Based on t

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Reasons for choosing the topic.

Nowaday, English plays an important role in schools, improving the quality of teaching and learning is a top important and necessary issue How students can fully grasp the knowledge and use it competently is a matter of concern to our teachers We all know that learning English is simply learning a language To use that language fluently, learners must practice four basic skills:

- Listening, -Speaking, -Reading, -Writing In which, reading skills play a decisive role in determining whether learners understand the content of the article or not Reading comprehension becomes a proactive skill in which learners play an active part of the participant in the information being read, processed, understood and decoded in the information to eventually respond to

it It's exactly like a process of four operations: feeling understanding -evaluating - responding In Vietnam, as in many Asian countries, English is now taught as a compulsory school subject from an early age (it is officially taught from grade 3 onwards) (Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), 2008), and many changes have been initiated in the teaching of the subject in the last few years Implement multiple-choice test for English subjects becomes popular and compulsory in high school graduation exams, university exams, and colleges of the Ministry of Education and Training Practicing test-taking skills

is considered as a basic goal in the teaching process to meet national examinations Reading comprehension is considered as a basic element of the exam preparation process Only when readers can respond will the reading process be completed and will the communication process achieve the desired results Ba Thuoc high school has many ethnic minorities students so their language knowledge is lower Poor reading skills cannot gain high scores in general exams and national examinations in the reading test part Therefore, Students who want to improve their grade in English exams have no other way but to improve their reading comprehension skills, and also do better in English tests

Based on the results of the tests, lesson plans, assessments on the receptive ability of Ba Thuoc School students and observation of the students’ activities in choosing the best answer in each test of grade 12 students, the conductor can recognize the difficulties of students in the process of solving differences in each reading fill exercise Therefore, I decided to choose the

topic: “Instruct students to improve reading comprehension skill through reading fill and comprehension exercises in Ba Thuoc high school”

+ Practical reasons:

Following the direction of the Ministry of Education on innovating the teaching method of English subject under the 2020 project, listening, speaking, reading and writing skills are four skills that need to be invested and focused to develop professional skills and communication skills for students The aims of this research are to investigate how English reading skills are taught in here and

to apply some new techniques and adjustment to help the students in Ba Thuoc high school tackle the challenges on the learning reading skills more effectively

+ Reasons for urgency:

According to the Department of Education's guidelines for the school-year assessment innovation, reading skills account for 40% of the 45-minute tests and semester exams of grades as well as tests national graduate Therefore, it is very important to focus on improving the effectiveness of reading classes

+ Reasons for the condition and capacity of the instructor:

Based on the results of the tests, lesson plans, assessments on the receptive ability of Ba Thuoc School students from teachers in solving reading comprehension exercises of grade 12 students, can recognize the following difficulties in the process of teaching and learning reading skills, especially through two types of exercises: reading fill and reading questions to answer for high school students

1.2 Aims of the study

The aims of this research are to investigate how English reading skills are taught in here and to apply some new techniques and adjustment to help the students tackle the challenges on the learning reading skills and focusing on solving two basic types of exercises: Cloze text / Reading comprehension (Entering words and answering questions) more effectively

1.3 Methods of the study

- Observe reading classes

- Draw from experience of my teaching

- Consult many documents , especially methods of study

- Study colleagues’ experience

1.4 Scope of the study

+ Subjects of study:

Grade 12 students The research has been carried out in 2 classes of grade: 12A3, A7 in 2022- 2023 school year 12A1 (in the controlling group) and 12A2 (in the experimental group)

+ Scope of study:

Practice test and semester exam question and Training and national high school English Graduation Exam questions last year

2 CONTENT 2.1 General difficulties in the process of teaching and learning reading:

+ On the learner's side:

Ba Thuoc High School is in high mountainous area which has many ethnic minority students Their initial point is low and a significant impact on the learning of most students They don’t focus on studying seriously because of their living standard It is the thinking of earning money early and easily that makes them neglect study They spend the less time doing homework and

preparing lessons before class Another drawback in this context is the bad learning habits that many beginning learners have

Another drawback in this context is the bad learning habits that many beginning learners have The habit of translating into Vietnamese to understand each word, the desire to read and understand 100% of information also makes many students unable to know what is the core content to capture and what information to skip during reading Misunderstanding of the requirements of different types of exercises makes the learner tired and tends to become confused during reading lessons in class

Admittedly the fact that for most students, reading is the most difficult skill Meanwhile, the amount of time spent learning to read in class is too little Less self-study time This partly explains the fact that some students are lazy to read before going to class, just see the answers, bad habits make the reading process meaningless and waste of time

The passive learning attitude during reading lessons in some classes that teachers have had the opportunity to attend also shows that learners do not seem

to pay adequate attention to self-improvement in the learning process

Psychological issues are also another difficulty for learners in receiving and responding to information When confronted with comprehension texts of over 300 words or unfamiliar reading topics or new words, students are often depressed and distracted

+ On the teacher's side:

The application of translation methods in language teaching including reading comprehension in some teachers makes the skill training ineffective

It is still a notion that reading is practicing receptive skill Learners are asked to receive information without any prior hints about the situation they are about to read, or they are not allowed to request feedback after reading clearly

Guide students in the traditional way by listing all the new words that appear in the text

Some teachers are also aware of the need to change teaching methods but due to the limited time in class, they cannot apply many effective measures to change the situation

2.2 Limitations in the process of teaching and learning reading skills.

+ Subjective limitations:

One of the main obstacles that prevents students from doing well the form of filling in is the lack of language knowledge Limited vocabulary is the biggest obstruction to the reading comprehension process of learners This restriction interferes with learners’ reading process when seeing to many new words, which has affected the speed and time of reading

+ Objective limitations:

+ For teachers:

Due to the limited time of 45 minute with so many tasks to carry out in a

class, there is not enough time to carefully guide students on tips to read effectively On the other hand, over 20 years learning process at Ba Thuoc high school, skill training requires time, perseverance, and repetition of the requirements of the lesson waste a lot of times, teachers do not have detailed instructions to clearly orient students about the topic of the reading or the steps to follow to solve the given reading exercises Especially, teacher’s attention cannot be paid equally to all the student groups in a big size class (40- 50 students)

+ For students

Students have complained that reading comprehension skill through reading fill exercises is extremely difficult because his skill not only requires students to understand the content of the reading passage, but also master the relevant grammar knowledge I have found that when doing this kind of tasks,

I found that the majority of the students choose the answer indiscriminately

As the result, they usually get bad marks At the beginning of the first semester

- school year 2022 - 2023, I conducted a small survey with 88 students in 2 classes – 12A3 and 12A7 - to find out the difficulties when they did the test and why a lot of them got bad result, and I got the result:

1 There are too many new words in the passage 60%

2 I spend time reading and translating the passage

into Vietnamese

50%

3 I don’t remember the grammatical knowledge 70%

4 I don’t know how to do this type of exercise 70%

In the process of teaching students to do reading comprehension tests and fill in correct answers, I noticed that most of the students do not grasp relevant grammatical knowledge such as word forms, conjunctions, quantity words

By analyzing subjective and objective difficulties in the process of teaching and learning reading, focusing on the type of exercise: filling in words the researcher recognizes that most students are confused, encounter many mistakes when doing homework, or do not even be able to do this type

of exercise at the average level The aim of the research is to suggest some solutions to improve the situation, to help students do the reading comprehension tasks more effectively and eventually improve their results and grades in exams

2.3 More specifically, to solve two basic types of exercises effectively:

fill in words and reading comprehensions.

+ Specific steps in teaching.

If the words you need are filled with unfamiliar vocabulary, students

rarely read it, the teacher should add that vocabulary to the new words, but

students do not have to translate the whole paragraph, only read and understand

the sentence containing the word to fill or the sentence before and after the

blank

Note that students have meaningful and valuable information on the

exercises just to guide the answers or information to be filled, because most

exercises are linked and related to each other

The teacher asks students to read the paragraph, then determines the type

of words to fill (nouns, adjectives, verbs, phrasal verbs, prepositions, etc.) and

predicts the meaning of the word or phrase to be filled out, because it helps

readers refine and choose the closest information Students need to note the

words or phrases before and after the blank as they may be related to the word to

be filled Ask students to identify language knowledge related to the spaces to be

filled (tenses, relative pronouns, conjunctions , comparisons, phrasal verbs

…………)

Answer questionsNumber Recognize Understanding Comprehension applicationAdvanced

-

Relative

pronoun

Measure implementation

+ The structure of the comprehension skill through reading fill exercises

+ Checking the word formation

Students must first understand the functional position of

adjectives, nouns, verbs and adverbs Only then can you

choose the correct answer

+ Nouns.

+ Adverb.

+ Adjective

Noun

Before

or after

adverb

After adj

After the articles

After possesive and indicative adj

After words

of quantity

“ment – ness – or –

ty – ance – tion – ee– cy – dom- hood - sion

Adverb

Before

or after

verb

Before adj

At the beginning of the sentence

Between aux and participle

Adj + ly = adv

adjective

Before

noun

After “ to be” or linking verb

Used in the structures: so…that/

such….that/ too…or the comparisions

Adj usually ends by: “- ful, - able, - ic, - less, - ous, - al, - ing/ed, - y, - ive, -ish, - ible, -ent, -ant,

+ Checking the meaning of the word

For this type of exercise, students often encounter conjunctions and quantity words

+ Conjunctions

For sentences with answers that are conjunctions, what form should students get after the blank?

Meaning

Conjunctions

Subordinator Preposition Conjunction adverbs Reason

Because, since, as Because of, thanks

to, on account of, owning to

Result

Therefore, consequently, as result, thus

Contrast

Although, even though, though, even if

Despite, in spite

of, regardless of

Nevertheless, however

Additional

meaning

In addition to, apart from, except for

Also, furthermore, moreover, in addition, besides,

- if it is a clause, subordinators are used

- if it is phrasal noun or Ving, prepositions are used

- if it is a sentences, conjunction adverbs are used

+ The quantities

When the answer is a word indicating quantity, it is necessary to

determine what kind of noun after the vacancy is, countable or

uncountable, plural or singular

- MANY = a large number of/a great

many/ a majority of/ a wide variety

of/ a wide range of

- Used with countable nouns

MUCH = a great deal of/a large

amount of

- Used with uncountable nouns

- Used with countable nouns - Used with uncountable nouns

SOME

- Used in affirmative sentences and in

interrogative sentences when

ANY

- Used in negative, interrogative

ALL

- Used to refer to three or more people/

things (all) or more

BOTH

- Used to refer to both people/things (both)

NONE

- Used to refer to three or more people/

things

NEITHER/EITHER

- Used to refer to both people/things not + Neither: used in affirmative sentences + Either: used in negative sentences

MOST

- Most + N

MOSTLY (mostly): used as an adverb

ALMOST (almost): used as an adverb

to complement verbs, adjectives, and

nouns

MOST OF

Most of + the/possessive adjective + N

EACH

- used with singular countable nouns

EVERY

- used with singular countable nouns

OTHER

- Other + uncountable noun

- Other + plural noun

- Other + ones

- Others are used as pronouns

- The other: the other of two, or

the other of two,

- The others: the remaining or

remaining people in a group of many

things or people

ANOTHER

- Another + singular noun

- Another + one

- Another + count + plural noun

- Another is used as a pronoun

+ Relative pronouns and adverbs.

When the answer is the relative pronoun, adverbs students must

understand the use and place of each type of relative pronouns and adverd

Table 1: The use of relative adverbs

WHERE Indicate

place

Table 2: Functions of relative pronouns

3 PROCEDURE

3.1 Arrange the experimental groups.

There are two groups in these experiments The first group consists of 42 students, class 12A3 For this group, the

in/at/on + which

= when/where Indicate time

for which

= why WHY

RELATIVE CLAUSE

Replace for things

WHICH Used both as a subject and an object WHO

(làm chủ ngữ hoặc

tân ngữ cho động từ

đứng sau nó)

Replace for possessive

of adjectives Replace for man

WHOSE

Usually use with noun

WHOM

Used as an

object

Don’t use “that” after comma and preposition

THAT

Replace for man and thing Use “that” after noun of

man and thing, definite pronoun, after adjs and superlative comparision …

researcher still uses the traditional methods while teaching,

focusing on translating the text into Vietnamese After that

students will be given the answers

The second group with 42 students, class 12A7 is taught by the new techniques for processing a reading text with tables and new methods Students are asked

to follow every step when they do reading fill exercises when they do this type

of exercise both in class and at home

3.2: Experimental time:

5 months (the first semester of school year 2022 - 2023) The first

test is taken at the beginning of the experiment in September 2022 and

the other is implemented in January 2023 The achievement in the

experiment is divided into 4 levels: very weak mark is from 1,0 to 3,0

points; weak mark is from 2 to 4 points; average mark is from 5 to 6

points; good mark is from 7 to 8 points

Table Result of tests after 5 months of the first groups.

Point

79hs

September

2022

The controlling

The experimental

January

2023

The controlling

The experimental

As can be seen from the table, most of the students (15 students= 34,8%) in group A3 get very low mark after 5 months from 1 to 4 points when doing the tests in the experiment and a moderate percentage (23 students

= 53,4 %) could get the average mark because the teacher still uses the traditional methods in teaching reading lessons Only 5 students (11,6 %) get above average and no students gets good mark after 5 months with different tests about relative pronouns and clauses It is obvious that without innovating techniques to practice during grammatical classes, little progress is seen in this group after a term