Investigating the reading skill challenges of the first year non – major students of English

Investigating the reading skill challenges of the first year non – major students of English Dương Thị Huyền Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Methodology; Mã số: 60 14 10 Người hướng dẫn: Dr. Hà Cẩm Tâm Năm bảo vệ: 2011 Abstract: With an investigation of challeges to reading skills at Hatay Community College, the purpose of the current study was to uncover challenges to such reading sub- skills as reading for specific information, finding the main ideas, guessing vocabulary from context, and making inferences. There were 100 students participating in the study. They were the first year non-majored English students. The instrument used was two reading tests. For the data analysis, statistic description (percentage) was adopted. Results of the study indicated that making inferences was the most challenging, and reading for specific information was the least challenging to the students. In terms of making inferences, they showed their weak ability in using contextual clues, making connections among ideas in the text as well as their poor background knowledge. In terms of finding the main ideas, they expressed their difficulties in distinguishing important and less important information, recognizing the topic sentence and making connections among ideas too. In terms of guessing vocabulary from context, they presented their limited knowledge of vocabulary, lack of word recognition skills and word meaning skills. In terms of reading for specific information, they exposed their problems on identifying key words and dealing with wh-questions. Keywords: Kỹ năng đọc; Tiếng Anh; Phương pháp giảng dạy; Đọc hiểu Content PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study At present, Vietnamese people consider English to be an important foreign language, and thus, a great number of students study it. In the context of global integration in the world, in general, and in Viet Nam in particular, the demand for learning English gets stronger and stronger. English is regarded as an indispensable tool for academic and career advancement. It can’t be denied, therefore, that English is now the dominant language, especially in language teaching programs in many schools. In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Viet Nam, reading seems to be the most important and useful activity in language classes. Of the four language skills, reading has always received a great deal of attention, which is emphasized by Carrell (1981: 1) that “For many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills in a second language, particularly in English as a second or foreign language”. It is quite true in the case of Hatay Community College (HTCC) context, where English has been the foreign language dominating in the teaching and learning programs for 33 years. Also, in the same picture, reading is the most important skill for students to master because reading texts exist new words and grammar, which are main parts in their test papers. Reading is an active process and the readers need to use reading skills to make them attain good reading comprehension. According to Anderson (1999: 1), he said “With strengthened reading skills, ESL/ EFL readers will make greater progress and attain greater development”. It can’t be denied that reading skills support significantly to readers’ reading comprehension. The better the reader uses reading skills, the better he/ she gains reading comprehension. However, the fact is that it is very difficult for a reader to master all reading skills because there are various sub-skills of reading comprehension. Therefore, (s)he is suggested to master some basic reading skills in order to understand the author’s thought. Firstly, he/she makes sure that he/she has no problems with vocabulary while reading, it means (s)he gains word recognition skills and word meaning skills. Secondly, (s)he has good ability to identify facts and details in the text. Thirdly, (s)he catches the main ideas of the text so (s)he will understand the author’s message underlining printed words. Once readers lack one of these skills, they will have trouble with the text they are dealing with, even they fail to understand what the author wants to convey. Unfortunately, it is the fact that many students at HTCC are struggling with reading because they lack one of these basic reading skills, which makes them cope with a lot of difficulty in attaining their reading comprehension. From this fact, it is necessary to find out challenges to reading skills in the English classrooms at HTCC so as to promote students to get their better reading comprehension. As a teacher of English, I myself think that it is essential to do a research on challenges to reading skills my students encountered with the hope that the students can improve their reading comprehension. As a result, I decide to choose the thesis title: “Investigating the reading skill challenges of the first year non – major students of English”. 2. Aim of the study The aim of the study is to investigate difficulties the first year non – major English students at HTCC deal with reading skills. Therefore, the objective of this study is: - to uncover what challenges to reading sub – skills the first year non – major students of English at HTCC encountered. It is hoped that the findings from this study will be of some benefits to both teachers and students at HTCC. 3. Significance of the study This study is significant for some reasons. Firstly, the study uncovers challenges to reading sub- skills the students had to suffer. Secondly, this study would help teachers and students realize a need to change current English teaching and learning method. Finally, it would enable students to improve their reading skills significantly in order that they can obtain their better reading comprehension. 4. Scope of the study Dealing with challenges of all reading sub-skills is too broad for a study of this size. Therefore, the study is only designed to examine such sub – skills of reading comprehension as reading for specific information, finding the main ideas, guessing vocabulary from the context and making inferences that the first year non – major students of English at HTCC are encountered with in reading comprehension. 5. Method of the study With the aim of finding out challenges to some reading sub-skills, quantitative method is used in this study. Two tests are instruments to collect the needed data. 6. Organization of the study This minor thesis is organized into three parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion Part one: Introduction: presents the rationale for the study, the aims, the method, significance, the scope of the study as well as the organization of the thesis. Part two: Development: consists of two chapters Chapter 1 discusses the literature review relevant to the research topic including the reading and reading comprehension, reading process, context and the role of context, schema theory, reading comprehension levels, reading comprehension skills. Chapter 2 presents the research methodology of the study, which focuses on research question, the participants, the instrument, data collection procedure, analytical framework, and data analysis and discussion. Part three: Conclusion: offers major findings, implications and provides limitations for the study, also some suggestions for future study. References 1. Aebersold, J.A. & Field, M.L. (1997). 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Widdowson, H. G., (1978). Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 55. William, E. (1986). Reading in the language classroom. Oxford: Macmillian Publishers 56. Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP . major students of English . 2. Aim of the study The aim of the study is to investigate difficulties the first year non – major English students at HTCC deal with reading skills. Therefore, the. with the hope that the students can improve their reading comprehension. As a result, I decide to choose the thesis title: Investigating the reading skill challenges of the first year non – major. Investigating the reading skill challenges of the first year non – major students of English Dương Thị Huyền Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Methodology;