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

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 su

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) From Reader to Reading Teacher Cambridge: CUP

2 Albert, J.H (1962) Effective Teaching of Reading David McKay Company, Inc.:New York

3 Alderson, J.C.,(2000) Assessing Reading Cambridge: CUP

4 Alderson, J C & Urquhart, A H (1984) Reading in a foreign language London, New

York: Longman

5 Anderson, N J (1999) Explore Second Language Reading: Issues and Strategies Heinle &

Heinle Publishers

6 Baumann, J.F (1986) Teaching Main Idea Comprehension International Reading

Association

7 Brown, F.G (1971) Measurement and Evaluation Hascs, III : F.E., Peacock

8 Brown, H D (1994) Teaching by Principles Prentice Hall Regents

9 Burns, P.C & Roe, B.D & Ross, E.P (1988) Teaching Reading in Today’s Elementary

Schools Houghton Mifflin Company

10 Cambourne, B (1979) “How important is theory to the reading teacher?” Australian

Journal of reading, 2, 78-90

11 Carrell, P (1981) Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading Cambridge: CUP

12 Carrell, P.L., (1983a) Some issues in studying the role of schemata, or background

knowledge in second language comprehension Reading in a Foreign Language 1(2), 81-92

13 Cook, L & Mayer, R (1989) Teaching readers about the Structure of Scientific Text

Journal of Educational Psychology

14 Donald, C C (1969) Reading Improvement in the Elementary School Parker publishing

Company, Inc

15 Dycus, D (1987) Guessing Word Meaning from Context: Should We Encourage It?

Literacy Across Culture Retrieved September, 2010 from the World Wide Web:

http://www.2aasa.ac.jp/~dedycus/LAC97/guessing.htm

16 Goodman, K (1971) “Psycholinguistic universals in the reading process” In P Pimsleur

and T Quinn (Ed.), Psychology of Second Language Learning Cambridge: CUP

17 Greenall, S (1994) Reward Pre-Intermediate Macmillan Heinemann

18 Grellet, F (1981) Developing Reading Skills: A practical guide to reading comprehension

exercises Cambridge: CUP

19 Hacker, C.J., (1980) “From Schema Theory to Classroom Practice” Language Arts 57,

866-71

20 Harmer, H (1989) The Practice of English language teaching Harlow: Longman

21 Harris, A.J (1962) Effective Teaching of Reading David McKay Company, Inc.: New York

22 Hayes, B L (1991) The effective teaching of reading in B L Hayes (Eds), Effective

strategies for teaching reading, 3-12 Boston: Allyn & Bacon

23 Heimlich, J.E and Pittleman, S.D (1986) Semantic Mapping: Classroom applications

Newark, DE: International Reading Association

24 Karlin, R & R Kartin (1988) Teaching of Elementary Reading Hartcourt Brace: Tovanovic

publisher

25 Lyons, J., (1995) Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction Cambridge: CUP

26 McDonough, J & McDonough, S (1997) Research methods for English language teachers

ARNOLD publisher

27 Michael, F.G., Connie, J & Bonnie, B.G (1998) Teaching Reading in the 21st Century

Allyn and Bacon

28 Miles, A.T & Constance, M McCullough (1975) Teaching Elementary Reading

Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

29 Munby, J (1978) Communicative Syllabus Design Cambridge: CUP

30 Nation, L.S (1983) Teaching and Learning Vocabulary English Language Institute

Wellington: University of Wellington

31 Nation, P & Coady, J (1988) Vocabulary and Reading In R Carter & M McCarthy (Eds)

Vocabulary Language Teaching London: Longman

32 Nunan, D (1991) Language Teaching Methodology New Jersey: Prentice Hall International

33 Nuttall, C (1982) Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language London: Heinemann Educational Books / Nuttall, C (1996) Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language

Macmillan Publishers Limited

34 Oakhill, J & Garnham, A (1988) Becoming a Skilled Reader B Blackwell: New York

35 Orasanu, J (1986) Reading Comprehension from Research to Practice Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates, Inc Publishers

36 Read, T A S (1983) What is a good classroom test? (in) Guilines a periodical for

classroom language teachers Classroom tests Crabbe, D (ed.) Volumn 5 No.1 Singapore:

SEAMEO regional language centre

37 Richards, J.C (1985) The Context of Language Teaching Cambridge: CUP

38 Richards, T.V & Joanne, L.V (1989) Content Area Reading Harper Collins Publishers

39 Rumelhart, D.E (1984) Understanding reading comprehension, ed by Flood, J Newark,

DE: International Reading Association 1-20

40 Samuels, S.J & Eisenberg, P (1981) A framework for understanding the reading process In

Pirozzolo, M & Wittrock, M (eds.) Neuropsychological and cognitive processes in reading New York: Academic Press

41 Samuels, S J & Kamil, M L (1988) Models of the reading process Cambridge: CUP

42 Selinger, H.W & Shohamy, E (1989) Second Language Research Methods Oxford: Oxford

University Press

43 Silberstein, S (1994) Techniques and Resources in Teaching Reading Oxford University

Press

44 Singer, M & Remillard, G (2004) Retrieving Text Inferences: Controlled and automatic

influences Reading Research Quarterly, 32(8), 1223-1237

45 Smith, F (1985) Reading Cambridge: CUP

46 Soars, J & Liz (2000) New Headway Pre-Intermediate Oxford University Press

47 Sosna, B.L & Abdulaziz, H.L (1985) Momentum Developing Reading Skills USA: Holt,

Rinehart & Winston, Inc

48 Standal, T C & Betza, R.E (1990) Content Area Reading: Teachers, Texts, Students

Prentice - Hall, Inc

49 Stanovich, K (1980) “Towards an Interactive compensatory models of individual

differences in the development of reading fluency” Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 32-71

50 Swan, M (1975) Inside Meaning Cambridge: CUP

51 Tomhutchinson (2009) Lifelines Pre-Intermediate Nha xuat ban Hai Phong

52 Vacca, R.T (1981) Content Area Reading Little, Brown and Company (Canada) Limited

53 Vacca, R.T & Vacca, J.L (1989) Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning across the

curriculum Boston: Allyn &Bacon

54 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