a study on students’ use of reading comprehension strategies a case of 10th form students = nghiên cứu cách học sinh sử dụng các chiến lược đọc hiểu trường hợp của học sinh lớp 10 trung học phổ thông

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES --- TRẦN THỊ THANH LOAN A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ USE OF READING COMPR

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-

TRẦN THỊ THANH LOAN

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ USE OF READING COMPREHENSION

STRATEGIES: A CASE OF 10TH FORM STUDENTS

(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁCH HỌC SINH SỬ DỤNG CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐỌC HIỂU: TRƯỜNG HỢP CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRUNG HỌC

PHỔ THÔNG)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-

TRẦN THỊ THANH LOAN

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ USE OF READING COMPREHENSION

STRATEGIES: A CASE OF 10TH FORM STUDENTS

(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁCH HỌC SINH SỬ DỤNG CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐỌC HIỂU: TRƯỜNG HỢP CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRUNG HỌC

PHỔ THÔNG)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Phuong Nga

Hanoi, 2014

i

DECLARATION

I hereby, certify the thesis entitled “A study on students’ use of reading comprehension

strategies: A case of 10 th form students” is the result of my own research for the degree

of Master of Arts at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi The thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other

universities or institutions I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library can

be accessible for the purposes of study and research

Hanoi, 2014

Trần Thị Thanh Loan

my study would not have been fulfilled

My sincere thanks also go to all the staff of the Department of Post-Graduate Studies for giving me assistance and the lecturers who conducted the Master course for

me with valuable knowledge and experience so that I was able to conduct this study

I would like to extend my deep appreciation to my colleagues and students at Pham Hong Thai high school for their cooperation and support so that I could complete

my necessary data collection for the study

Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my family and friends, who have always been by my side to encourage and support me during the process of this research Without their help and encouragement, I could not have completed this study

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ABSTRACT

This is the study on students’ use of reading comprehension strategies The target population is the 10 th form students at Pham Hong Thai high school The main aims of this study are to discover the current situation of applying reading strategies of the 10 th form students, and to figure out how to enhance their reading comprehension To achieve these objectives, the researcher uses (1) survey questionnaire for the students, and (2) unstructured interview for English teachers The results of the questionnaires show that the students are aware of the importance of reading comprehension in general and reading strategies in particular Additionally, the reading strategies applied by the students are restricted and not frequently Besides, the interview’s result indicates that teachers also apply only some of the reading strategies in their reading lessons including scanning, skimming and guessing new words in context The researcher also finds it possible to enhance student’s reading comprehension with the use of reading strategies according to the teaching methods of teachers in the interview Acknowledging the obstacles and the students’ positive attitudes towards the use of reading strategies, it is recommended that more reading strategies be used and adapted in the class time to meet

the individuals’ needs and abilities

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, FIGURES AND TABLES

ABBREVIATIONS:

FIGURES AND TABLES:

Figure 1: The importance of reading comprehension

Figure 2: Students’ purposes of learning reading in English

Figure 3: The difficulties in reading a text

Figure 4: The importance of having good reading strategies

Table 1: Background Information of the Subjects

Table 2: Results of predicting strategy

Table 3: Results of skimming strategy

Table 4: Results of scanning strategy

Table 5: Results of inferring strategy

Table 6: Results of guessing meaning strategy

Table 7: Results of self – monitoring strategy

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, FIGURES AND TABLES iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS v

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1

2 Aims and objectives of the studies 2

3 Significance of the study 2

4 Research methodology of the study 2

5 Scope of the study 3

6 Design of the Study 3

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Reading comprehension 4

1.2 Reading strategies 6

1.3 Teaching and learning reading strategies 9

1.4 Researches on reading strategies 11

CHAPTER 2: THE METHODOLOGY 17

2.1 An overview of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks) 17

2.2 Objectives and method of the study 19

2.3 The participants of the study 19

2.4 Instruments of data collection 21

2.5 Data collection procedures 22

2.6 Data analysis procedures 23

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH’S RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 24

3.1 The survey questionnaire results 24

3.2 The interview results 32

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PART 3: CONCLUSION 36

1 Conclusions 36

2 Limitations of the study 38

3 Suggestions for further study 38

REFERENCES 40

1

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

Teaching a foreign language in general and English in particular requires great knowledge, experiences and efforts

According to Carrell (1984:1), “for many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills, particularly in English as a second or a foreign language” Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because it supports learning in many ways Firstly, reading material is a language input Students given a variety of materials to read have many opportunities to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure and discourse structure Secondly, reading for content information in the language classroom provides students with both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading Thirdly, reading helps students broaden their knowledge of the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying

Researchers believe that teaching productive reading strategies motivate students

to read and facilitate reading comprehension (Anderson, 2003; Eskey, 2002; Grabe, 2004) It also appears that good students apply a variety of reading strategies to their learning Therefore, the importance of teaching reading strategies is to not also facilitate students’ reading process but help student enrich their vocabulary and grammar as well

What is more, in the context of the upper secondary school, reading is even more important than other three skills of speaking, listening, and writing The reason is that students have to take the examinations, which are grammar- and reading- based However, the students’ reading proficiency is not satisfactory

Thus, this study is conducted to investigate the use of reading strategies of the 10thgrade students at Pham Hong Thai high school Although almost all 10th form students have learnt English since grade 6, many of them do not know or use appropriate reading strategies yet As a result, they can become easily frustrated when they do not understand what they are reading, and they become demotivated

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For the above-mentioned factors, the researcher attempted to conduct a study

named “A study on students’ use of reading comprehension strategies: A case of 10 th

form students”

2 Aims and objectives of the studies

Firstly, the research is carried out to investigate the current use of reading comprehension strategies applied by the 10th form students in Pham Hong Thai high school Secondly, the study is to figure out how to enhance 10th form students’ reading comprehension Therefore, the research is to seek answers to the following research questions:

1 What are reading strategies currently applied by 10 th form students in Pham Hong Thai high school?

2 How to improve 10 th form students’ reading comprehension?

3 Significance of the study

Once successfully completed, the study’s findings and discussions are expected to

be beneficial to English teachers, the 10th forms students, the researcher herself as well as other researchers Firstly, teachers of English can recognize the significant benefits, if any, of strategies in teaching reading comprehension Based on the findings, teachers could adapt their current situation of teaching reading so that they could improve their students’ reading comprehension Also, there are some suggested solutions for teachers to prepare an efficient technique to motivate students’ participation in their studying and to teach them how to read effectively Secondly, reading comprehension strategies can provide students with self-study to improve their reading skills and to face reading comprehension difficulties Additionally, this study is expected to bring the researcher an invaluable experience as it provides her with knowledge and techniques to teach reading comprehension strategies Finally, the findings of this study are hoped to offer reliable and updated information for interested and further studies

4 Research methodology of the study

This study is conducted as a descriptive study that applied qualitative approach The qualitative analysis is employed mainly through the process of data collected from a

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written survey questionnaire delivered to 10th form students to examine the use of reading strategies, and through an unstructured group interview which is carried out to teachers to find out how to improve 10th form students’ reading comprehension

5 Scope of the study

According to the Ministry of Education and Training’s requirements, high school students have to be taught all four skills including reading, speaking, listening, and writing However, it is because of the large size of the class and test – oriented that English lesson focuses more on reading Thus, this research only put the emphasis on the use of reading strategies of the 10th form students, who are at the beginning of high

school but have just learnt English for more than 5 years

6 Design of the Study

The thesis consists of three main parts: introduction, development and conclusion The Introduction aims at the rationale, the aims, the scope, and also the design of the study

The Development consists of three chapters Chapter 1is Literature Review This chapter reviews some theories of basic concept based on the publications in the field The results from the recent studies for the issues related to the aspects of the subject in the same field are also presented Chapter 2 is the Methodology In this chapter, the author presents the research methodology and the instruments used to collect data from the questionnaire for the students and the unstructured group interview with teachers The procedure of collecting data and the analysis of the survey data is also described carefully Chapter 3 is the Research Findings and Discussion which presents the research’s findings (i.e analysis of data, results) and discussion

In the Conclusion, the author presents the conclusions and limitations of the study

as well as some suggestions for the further related studies

This chapter is followed by the References and Appendices

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PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this first chapter, the theoretical background, literature on the concept of reading comprehension, and reading strategies are going to be thoroughly presented This chapter also analyzes some studies on reading strategies that have been conducted so far

so that the researcher could discuss on the results later

When it comes to reading in second language, Williams (1984:2) stated that reading is “a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been written… The reader does not necessarily need to look at everything in a given piece of writing The reader is not simply a passive object, fed with letters, words and sentences, but is actively working on the text and is able to arrive at understanding without looking at every letter and word.”

Anderson (2003:68) offered another definition of reading, which is “a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning The goal of reading is comprehension.”

Although these definitions are expressed differently, they convey the same idea that reading is a selective process and characterized as an active process of comprehending Thus, the reader’s knowledge of the language and knowledge of the world is of great importance to their reading success

1.1.2 Reading comprehension

In teaching reading, it is necessary for both teachers and students to have a deep understanding about the definition of reading comprehension

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Reading comprehension can be understood as the ability to obtain the information

as required in the reading text as efficiently as possible Different scholars offered various points of view on the definition of reading comprehension

According to Richard, Thomas and Jere (1987: 143), reading comprehension is

a mental process that in the final analysis, only the readers fully understand Comprehension is what stimulates readers to remember the past experience That knowledge is, then, used in trying to get meaning out of print Meaning does not reside on the printed page but rather in the meaning of the reader

Roe, Stoodt and Burns (1987:2) proposed that “reading comprehension is reconstruction, interpretation and evaluation of what author of written content means by using knowledge gained from life experience”

According to interactive model of reading, comprehension is built up or constructed from knowledge sources which interact with each other on the input from the written page

Comprehension, by definition, is the process of relating new or incoming information to information already stored in memory Readers make connections between the new information on the printed page and their existing knowledge They must allow the new information to enter and become a part of their knowledge store

(Lee and Vanpatten, 1995:191)

Ur (1996:148), on the other hands, stated that effective reading comprehension is a process with the elements as follow:

- a clear purpose in mind

- an enhanced motivation

- appropriate reading comprehension strategies based on the purposes and motivation

- good prediction

- sufficient background information and vocabulary

- close attention to the significant bits

- fairly high speed From these opinions, what comes up as a common point is that reading comprehension is not only simply understanding what is written, but also is what stimulates students to remember from their experiences That knowledge is then used to get meaning out of printed page, but in the mind of the readers, which included facts, emotion, belief and critical evaluation It can be concluded that reading comprehension is

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the process of understanding what is conveyed in the text That means, the readers (or the learners), as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind these forms

Oxford, Levine & Crookall, (1989) indicated that reading strategy is reading technique and study skill which makes reading more effective and facilitate learning They also elaborated that reading strategies is a process used by the learners to improve reading comprehension and overcome comprehension failures

Brown (1990) considered reading strategies as the ways that help learners read more quickly and effectively

Another definition of reading strategies was given by O’ Malley & Chamot (1990)

is that the term reading strategies refers to those conscious and unconscious procedures, actions, techniques or behavior that learners employ so as to enhance their comprehension and make up for interpretation problems

In short, although many different definitions were given, what can be come up with is that all the above mentioned definition supported each other What is more, reading strategies can be defined as the ways show readers how to manage their interaction with the written text to comprehend and learn new information from the reading texts effectively

1.2.2 Classifications

Researchers in reading strategy studies have utilized different strategy types when categorizing reading strategies

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Block (1986) and Carrell (1989) categorized reading strategies they found into general or global strategies and local strategies Whereas local strategies constitute a category of decoding strategies, global strategies are related to top-down types of reading, including getting the gist of a reading, utilizing background knowledge, and being aware

of text organization

According to Barnett (1988), this process may involve skimming, scanning, guessing, recognizing cognates and word families, reading for meaning, predicting, activating general knowledge, making inferences, following references and separating main ideas from supporting ones

Oxford (1990) identified six components of reading strategies as follows:

 Prediction

Prediction refers to the technique of using the readers’ prior knowledge to guess the meaning or the message of the text from the topics, pictures, key words, or constructions It is one of the most effective factors that motivate students to read and understand the meaning of the context (Oxford, 1990)

 Skimming

Skimming refers to the technique of reading passages quickly in order to get its gist In skimming, readers do not look for specific information but only for general information (Grellet, 1986)

 Scanning

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Scanning is quite similar to skimming in that both of them require a quick glance

of a text The difference is that in skimming, readers try to get the general or main information of the text but in scanning, the readers would like to obtain specific information In scanning technique, readers are looking to find particular information – the answer to his/her questions

 Inferring

Inferring refers to activities of reading between the lines which means that readers need to know how to get the message from the words and sentences in a text So, inferring is defined as the interaction between words in a sentence/phrase or between sentences or phrases (Kristin, Leah, & Soro, 2009)

 Guessing the meaning of new words

Guessing the meaning of new words helps readers to read and understand text quickly because difficult words usually create problems for students and are obstacles in reading comprehension (Smith, 1994)

In conclusion, different scholars classified reading strategies using different terms, and not in all contexts that learners can apply all the above mentioned reading strategies They rather base on the purpose of reading to utilize one/ some/ or all of them to read Hence, the importance of reading strategies should be aware of

Reading strategies are important as they help readers to reach their reading goals and achieve good results in reading (Block, 1986) As such, students or readers who do not use any strategies in reading usually face difficulties in reading comprehension

Regarding the importance of reading strategies, readers often encounter problems

in reading the text and have difficulties in understanding the meaning of the context but

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reading strategies help them in learning foreign language and reading comprehension In fact, students will be able to relate newly acquired information to their prior knowledge

in context areas which is an essential part of reading comprehension skill

According to Dehnad (2005), reading strategy provides learning opportunities, facilitates learning and recalling of information as well as strengthening the reading comprehension ability of language learners Learners need to be explicitly taught how to properly use reading strategies to monitor their reading comprehension Through the employment of reading strategy such as meta-cognitive instruction in English class, EFL learners will be able to improve their reading comprehension and experience a higher level of competency which will further motivate them to read on a regular basis (Block, 1992)

Chamot (2005) stated that students have their own preference of strategy, but in order to become motivated and selective strategy users, EFL learners should self monitor their reading strategy In other words, EFL learners need to consciously know what and when to apply appropriate reading strategy when comprehension fails

All in all, it can be denied that reading strategies are of great importance towards second language learners Hence, students should be exposed to multiple reading strategies as well as the appropriate use of those strategies for better results In addition, students should be taught to become more aware of their own reading behavior and the processes involved in reading to employ the reading strategies effectively

This study adopted Oxford’s classification of reading strategies

1.3 Teaching and learning reading strategies

As acknowledged by many researchers, teaching second or foreign language readers how to use strategies should be part of every reading lesson

Learning reading strategies refers to any sets of activities, stages, programs, or techniques that help students to keep, achieve, or evaluate information (Wenden & Rubin, 1987) Teachers can help students learn when and how to use reading strategies in several ways

Firstly, teachers can model the strategies aloud, talking through the processes of predicting, skimming, scanning, inferring, guessing the meaning of new words and self-

 Skimming: a process of speed reading for getting general meaning: quickly getting the gist or overview of a passage or book

 Scanning: looking through a text very rapidly for specific information

 Inferring: finding clues and add those clues to what have been known or read based on prior knowledge

 Guessing the meaning of new words: using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up

 Self – monitoring: checking comprehension during reading

Secondly, teachers should allow time in class for group and individual to preview and predict activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading Allocating class time to these activities indicates their importance and value

Another way teachers can utilize is using cloze exercises to review vocabulary items This helps students learn to guess meaning from context

Last but not least, teachers are advised to encourage students to talk about what strategies they think will help them approach a reading assignment, and then talking after reading about what strategies they actually used This helps students develop flexibility in their choice of strategies

As regards students, they need to figure out the purpose for reading Additionally, they should activate their background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate reading strategies Next, they should select strategies that are appropriate to the reading tasks and use them flexibly and interactively Finally, students have to check comprehension while reading and when the reading task

1.4 Research on reading strategies

A considerable number of studies examined the comprehension strategies that second language readers apply to process a text Obviously, the participants were of many different ages, levels and backgrounds Furthermore, the investigators used a variety of research method and tasks to examine strategy type and frequency of strategy use including think-aloud reports, interviews, questionnaires, observations and written recalls

1.4.1 Foreign research on reading strategies

In a second-language study, Hosenfeld (1977) used a think-aloud procedure to identify relations between certain types of reading strategies and successful or unsuccessful second language reading The successful reader, for example, kept the meaning of the passage in mind while reading read in broad phrases, skipped inconsequential or less important words, and had a positive self-concept as a reader The unsuccessful reader on the other hand, lost the meaning of the sentences when decoded, read in short phrases, pondered over inconsequential words, seldom skipped words as unimportant, and had a negative self-concept

Carrell (1989) carried out the research with two groups of students: the Spanish- speaking group and English- speaking group The instrument was questionnaires to find out the relationship between the reading strategies used by first and second language learners and their reading ability The results indicated that the perception of strategies between good L1 readers and good L2 readers had some differences The Spanish- speaking learners of English perceived global or top down strategies more effectively, whereas local or bottom-up strategies were associated with English- speaking learners’ reading ability in the L2

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Anderson (1991) investigated the differences in reading strategy use by adult second language learners The results revealed that both high and low scoring readers appeared to be using the same kinds of strategies while answering the comprehension questions; however, high scoring students seemed to be applying strategies more effectively and appropriately

Block (1992) investigated the comprehension monitoring process used by first and second language readers of English The subjects were 25 college freshmen and consisted

of proficient and non-proficient readers of English While reading an expository text, the participants were asked to think aloud or more specifically, to "say everything they understood and everything they were thinking as they read each sentence" (Block, 1992: 323) The results indicated that when facing a vocabulary problem, proficient ESL readers used background knowledge, decided on whether the word contributed to the overall meaning of the passage, reread the sentence and used syntactic clues The meaning-based strategies are classified as global behaviors On the other hand, non-proficient ESL readers focused on identifying lexical problems and did little to figure out the meaning of the words

Sugirin (1999) used a multi-method study to explore the comprehension strategies

of EFL readers The research methods used were think-aloud protocol analysis, retellings,

a reading comprehension test, in-depth interviews and casual observations The results indicated that there were noticeable gaps among the participants in the degree of comprehension and the strategies used Additionally, the subjects were found to share characteristics of both poor and good readers In the think-aloud activity, they skimmed the whole text at the beginning although they were instructed to read it sentence by sentence, which indicates that their strategies follow top-down processing, considered a characteristic of good readers’ strategies

Hung (2001) investigated the frequency and types of reading strategies used by third-year male and female students in senior high school The findings showed that there was a significant difference by gender in the reading comprehension ability, in which female students were better than male students However, there was no significant difference between male and female students in terms of overall strategy use Besides, no

on each question type than the average readers

In conclusion, the findings of all the above – mentioned researches in reading strategies revealed that reading strategies facilitated their comprehension proficiency Additionally, there are indeed differences between successful or good readers, and less successful or poor readers in terms of strategy use The results showed that successful readers know how to use reading strategies efficiently.There is also a strong relationship between reading strategies and proficiency level Poor readers failed to ask questions, take notes or use a dictionary as often as good readers Overall, good readers appear to use a wider range of strategies with higher frequency than poor readers do Besides, there is no significant difference between male and female students in terms of overall strategy use

1.4.2 Vietnamese research on reading strategies

Ha (2006) carried out a study named “A study on English reading strategies employed by the second year Bridge and Road students at University of Transport and Communications” The aim of the study was to examine the differences in the reading strategies employed by the good and poor readers among a group of 13 second year non English majors at the University of Transport and Communications In this study, both quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed The quantitative analyses was employed through the process of data collected from a written questionnaire and think-

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aloud reports to examine the differences between the good and bad readers in their reading strategies In addition, the qualitative approach is used to deal with the data collected from interviews with these two groups of readers Based on the analysis of data from questionnaires and think-aloud reports, the study showed that the good or effective and bad or ineffective readers significantly differed from each other in the frequency of strategy use The effective readers tended to use the metacognitive and cognitive strategies much more frequently than the ineffective ones

Huong (2007) carried out a study called “How to Improve Reading Comprehension of the 10th-Form Students at Le Hong Phong High School” The objectives of the study were to investigate the real situation of teaching and learning reading at Le Hong Phong High School, the difficulties in reading that the 10th-form students often cope with so as to give some suggestions for improving their reading comprehension The study employed the qualitative approach involving two survey questionnaires with 97 tenth form students and 8 teachers of English at Le Hong Phong High School to collect the data for the study The findings revealed that the teachers were aware of many factors that affect students’ reading comprehension, and there were four main factors that should be taken into consideration for the 10th-form students, namely students’ lack of background knowledge and world knowledge, students’ low motivation, students’ limited vocabulary and grammatical structures and their lack of appropriate reading strategies Additionally, the findings of the study also indicated that there was a big gap between what the teachers have done to motivate the students and what the students prefer The majority of students prefer having supplementary reading texts for extensive reading They want their teachers to provide them with reading strategies, how

to read efficiently Besides, it reveals that the teachers do not make full use of games and visual aids of which catch the interest of most the students

Sao (2008) conducted a study to investigate students’ difficulties in reading texts

in the new textbook for grade 10 at Nghi Loc IV high school according to their perceptions The study employed semi-structured interviews will be conducted on a group of 20 tenth form students to collect the data The findings of the study showed that when learning reading skills the students encounter difficulties in vocabulary, grammar,

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background knowledge and reading tasks The findings also showed that despite the awareness of the importance of reading, some students had negative attitude toward learning English which made their reading more difficult Moreover, students were not equipped with necessary skills to become successful readers and some units, reading tasks were not appropriate for the students’ levels Finally, inefficient teaching methods and classroom techniques might be other causes of the students’ difficulties

Linh (2009) implemented a study among 100 eleventh form students and ten teachers at Phan Dang Luu high school to investigate the current situation of teaching and learning reading comprehension of the 11th form students to find out advantages as well

as problems facing both teachers and students in reading lessons, and to suggest useful techniques to develop the reading comprehension skills in the while- reading stage for the

11th form in Phan Dang Luu high school The research method included consulting

related materials, survey questionnaires and reading lessons observations The thesis

presented some useful techniques accompanied by a number of activities to develop certain reading skills for students in the while- reading stage, i.e reading for general understanding, reading for specific information and reading for further understanding Additionally, the statistics indicated that both students and teachers have positive attitudes toward teaching and learning reading However the while- reading activities the

teachers used were not sufficient enough to develop their students reading skills

Huong (2010) conducted a study applying quantitative method including comprehension tests and survey questionnaires to investigate the reading strategies utilized by readers among 32 ethnic minority junior first-year English-majored students at

Tay Bac University The findings confirmed that the readers rarely or sometimes

employed top-down or tended to combine top-down and bottom-up strategies They

hardly ever or sometimes read questions to know what to focus on while reading,

determined suitable strategies according to their reading purposes, scanned for key information, skipped unimportant words, guessed meanings of new words in context

In short, the above researches mainly focus on the use of reading strategies of high school and university students The results indicated that there were significant differences between good readers and bad readers in the frequency of strategy use

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Moreover, both high school and university students had difficulties in choosing and applying appropriate reading strategies while learning reading As for high school students, they also faced up with difficulties regarding vocabulary, grammatical structures, background knowledge and reading tasks

All in all, it can be concluded that learning reading strategy is one of the effective factor in improving EFL reading comprehension proficiency The more reading strategies readers employed while reading, the better the comprehension What is more, it is the teacher’s responsibilities to motivate reading by selecting the appropriate materials and especially for those at the early stages of learning

SUMMARY

In this chapter, the researcher has elaborately discussed the theoretical basis of the study by defining and clarifying the various aspects in the hope of providing an important background for the discussion of the collected data later The following chapter will display the methodology and findings of the research under the light of the above-mentioned theories

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CHAPTER 2: THE METHODOLOGY

The previous chapter has provided a necessary theoretical background for the present study This chapter presents the methodology used for the data collection and analysis in the study It starts with setting of the study and the description of the participants It then describes data collection instruments and analysis procedures of the study

2.1 An overview of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard

textbooks)

2.1.1 Objectives

The English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks) was written

by a group of lecturers of ULIS (VNU, Hanoi) and published in 2006 The syllabus of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” is the continuation of that of the textbooks at secondary schools

According to the Ministry of Education and Training, by the end of the 10th form students are expected to achieve the following:

- Listen for the main ideas or for specific information of a monologue or a dialogue with the length of 120 - 150 words of the topics they have learnt

- Exchange information in English at a simple level about the situations relating to the topics they have learnt

- Comprehend passages of appropriately 190 - 230 words about the topics they have learnt

- Understand the main ideas of the text or understand the text in detail Develop vocabulary comprehension: gap - filling, matching, etc

- Write paragraphs (of about 100 - 120 words) relating to the topics they have learnt according to a model or with prompts

It can be seen that although students have learnt English for many years (may be since secondary school); they come from different schools with different teaching methods Therefore, their levels and proficiency also vary Additionally, in such context

of large class size and short period of time, it is likely that not all students can achieve the goals, and there are differences between students

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2.1.2 Content of the textbook

The English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” is designed under theme- based approach with16 units covering six topics Topic one is “You and Me” consisting of unit 1 (A day

in the life of ), unit 2 (School talk) and unit 3 (People’s background) Topic 2 is about

“Education” which includes unit 4 (Special education), unit 5 (Technology and you), and unit 6 (An excursion) Topic 3 is “Community” comprising unit 7 (The mass media) and unit 8 (The story of my village) Topic 4 is about “Nature and Environment” (Unit 9 - Undersea world, 10 - Conservation, and 11 - National parks) The next topic is

“Recreation” (Unit 12 - Music, 13 - Films and cinema, 14 - The world cup) People and Places (Units 15 Cities, 16 Historical places)

There are five parts in each unit arranging in equal order as follows: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing, and Language focus Each part is carried out in a period (45 minutes) The aim of the arrangement is to help students to practice four macro-skills

as much as possible In addition, there is a “Test yourself” after every two or three units The objectives of the “Test yourself” is to examine how well students have achieved in the previous units The “Test yourself” is constructed as follows: Listening, Reading, Grammar and Writing

Reading is the beginning part of each unit The aims of this is that through reading and through developing reading skills such as scanning, skimming, etc the students are provided with language input Therefore, students can speak, listen and write about the things relating to the theme in the next parts

Hence, it is essential for students to have good reading strategies to learn other skills Due to the scope of the study, below are the characteristics of reading part in the textbook

2.1.3 Characteristics of reading part in the textbook

In reading part, there is always a passage whose topic relates to other three skills

It is designed with three parts including “Before you read” (pre-reading), “While you read” (while-reading) and “After you read” (post-reading)

“Before you read” often gives questions with clear and beautiful pictures to lead in the topic of the text In “While you read” (While - reading) of each unit, there are two or

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three tasks with its own aim Students often have to scan for specific information and skim for general ideas By doing the tasks with such reading strategies, students can be able to enhance their reading skills “After you read” also provides useful activities for students and helps students revise what they have learnt from the passage

Obviously, various topics in the reading texts are beneficial for reading comprehension development However, sometimes students struggle to understand the reading texts because some passages have got new words and grammatical structures Thus, in order to understand the reading passages, the teachers have to provide students with reading strategies, guidance, and support

In conclusion, reading part helps students improve mainly scanning and skimming strategies, so they haven’t learnt all of the reading strategies well

2.2 Objectives and method of the study

The research was carried out to investigate the current use of reading comprehension strategies applied by the 10th form students in Pham Hong Thai high school and find out how to enhance 10th form students’ reading comprehension Therefore, the research was to seek answers to the following research questions:

1 What are reading strategies currently applied by 10 th form students in Pham Hong Thai high school?

2 How to improve 10 th form students’ reading comprehension?

To conduct this study, qualitative approach was employed The qualitative analysis was employed mainly through the process of data collected from a written survey questionnaire delivered to 10th form students and an unstructured group interview with 10th form English teachers at Pham Hong Thai high school

2.3 The participants of the study

The participants of the study consisted of the tenth form students and the tenth form English teachers at PHT high school

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2.3.1 Students

As for the students, the samples were 150 tenth form students from four classes chosen randomly as follow:

There are 13 classes of the tenth form students, and each class has approximately

35 students These 13 classes were arranged in ascending order from 1 to 13, then one class chosen after every 3 classes

There are some reasons for choosing these tenth form students as the participants

of this study Firstly, the training quality of these students is always of great concern to teachers at PHT high school The findings of the study would provide essential information for teachers to improve PHT students' reading proficiency and hence contribute to enhancing the overall training quality of these students Secondly, they are suitable participants for the study because they have already finished the first semester in English reading Their proficiency levels were generally reported to be between elementary and intermediate, which is of great concern towards the researcher to conduct the study on reading strategies In addition, these students are chosen randomly from four classes, it is feasible for the researcher to have favorable conditions to carry out all the steps of the research process

2.3.2 Teachers

As regards the teachers, currently, there are five English teachers including the researcher herself being in charge of teaching English to the 10th form students However, to assure the objective opinions, only four teachers were chosen to be the participants All of them are energetic and are willing to devote their time and energy to teaching Additionally, all of them have much valuable experience of teaching (more than ten years) Thus, they can be well-aware of students’ needs, their strengths and weaknesses as well as their strategies in learning English reading skill They were interviewed to share their opinions and experience on how to improve their students’ reading comprehension

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2.4 Instruments of data collection

The major instruments employed in this study are survey questionnaire for

students and semi unstructured group interview for teachers

2.4.1 Questionnaire for students

Questionnaire is printed forms for data collection, which include questions or statements to which the subject is expected to respond Questions can range from those that ask for yes-no responses or indication of frequency to less structured questions asking respondents to describe or discuss language learning behavior in detail It is believed that surveys are the most commonly used descriptive method in educational research There are a few advantages to use survey questionnaire as a research method

"The main attraction of questionnaires is their unprecedented efficiency in terms of (a) researcher time, (b) researcher effort, and (c) financial resources." (Zoltan Dornyei, 2003: 9) Also, Selinger and Shohany (1989) pointed out the following advantages of questionnaires Firstly, they do not take so much time to administer as other procedures Secondly, since the same questionnaire is given to all subjects at the same time, the data are more uniform, standard and accurate Lastly, questionnaires can be easily quantified because multiple choice questions are used Because of these advantages, questionnaire is employed as a main data collection method in this study

The questionnaire used in this study consisted of two main parts The first one asked for the subjects’ background information including their ages, genders, the number

of years learning English, and their self-evaluated English proficiency levels The second part comprised of seven questions, in which two questions used 4 – point Likert scale to figure out the students’ attitude toward reading comprehension and having good reading strategies Two other questions are multiple choice ones which asked for students’ purposes of learning reading and their difficulties in reading a text The next question used 5 – point Likert scale to measure the participants' reading strategies and two last questions were open – ended ones seeking for their use of other reading strategies and their ideas about teachers’ action to help enhance their reading comprehension (See Appendix 1)

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2.4.2 Unstructured group interview for teachers

Together with survey questionnaire for students, the researcher also employed an unstructured group interview for teachers as another source of data collection to assure the validity and reliability of the data collected for the study As interviews are interactive, the researcher can “elicit additional data if initial answers are vague, incomplete, off-topic or not specific enough” (Mackey and Grass, 2005:173)

It is noted that the interview was an unstructured interview seeking for their opinion on how to enhance their students’ reading comprehension Additionally, the questions were all open-ended, which encouraged the interviewees to expand upon their answers, clarify some issues; give more details or add additional perspectives around the topic Additionally, the interview was tape-recorded and the important points throughout the interview were noted down, which was useful for later interpretation

2.5 Data collection procedures

The procedure of data collection consists of three main stages as follows:

Stage 1: In this stage, the survey questionnaire was constructed and edited carefully After that, it was modified and piloted with some respondents to ensure that both of their content and structures could be suitable to the samples

Stage 2: The survey questionnaire for the students was administered by the researcher in the classes The aim of this questionnaire was to figure out the current situation of reading comprehension strategies used by the samples The researcher briefly introduced her study, instructed them how to complete the survey questions (Vietnamese version) and got trimmed to help them if needed in order to avoid misunderstanding and achieve the most accurate results

Stage 3: Then, the researcher contacted with four 10th form English teacher so as

to invite them to participate in the interviews It is noted that, all of respondents’ personal information were assured to be particularly kept confidential by the researcher

The interview with the tenth form English teachers was conducted after the data of the survey questionnaire were analyzed The purpose of this interview was to affirm the