Information transfer activities for the teaching of reading using Tieng Anh 11 at Nguyen Du high school in Ha Tinh province

z MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY *************************** Tran Thi Phuong Chi INFORMATION TRANSFER ACTIVITIES FOR THE TEACHING OF READING USING ''TIENG ANH 11'

z

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

VINH UNIVERSITY

***************************

Tran Thi Phuong Chi

INFORMATION TRANSFER ACTIVITIES FOR THE TEACHING

OF READING USING ''TIENG ANH 11'' AT NGUYEN DU HIGH

SCHOOL IN HA TINH PROVINCE

MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

VINH 2013

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I hereby acknowledge that this study entitled " Information transfer activitiesfor the teaching of reading using Tieng Anh 11" at Nguyen Du high school is myoriginal work The data and the findings discussed in the thesis are true The study

is submitted in partial fulfilment for the Master degree of Theory andMethodology of English Language Teaching at Vinh University and has not beensubmitted elsewhere in any other form for the fulfilment of any other degree orqualification

Signature

Tran Thi Phuong Chi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Above all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Associate Professor Truong Vien for his whole - hearted help and precious guidance from the beginning till the end of the research

I wish to express my particular thanks to the teachers and students from Nguyen Du high school for having enthusiastically offered me their valuable supports, assessments and suggestions to complete the thesi

I gratefully acknowledge my dear teachers and friends at the English Department of Vinh University of Foreign Languages for having created favorable conditions and provided me with useful materials during the time I carried out the studies.

I would also to say " thank you" to the students and teachers of Nghi Xuan and Nguyen Cong Tru high school for their participation in the piloting process and for their constructive comment

Last but not least, I thank my family and my special friends and other people for always being by my side encouraging me in every step of my life as well

as in this project.

ABSTRACT

The project " Information transfer activities for the teaching of readingusing Tieng Anh 11" has been carried out with the effort to provide theeffective and interesting Information Transfer activities for eleventh gradeteachers and students of English All the activities were carefully selected,adapted and designed to satisfy the adhenrents of the communicativeapproach On the way to attaining the goal of the project, backgroundknowledge of how Information Transfer is defined, what advantagesInformation Transfer activities can offer and why we use informationTransfer activities in teaching reading comprehension The major types ofinformation Transfer tasks and aspects of application of the activities in thecontext of Vietnamese high school classroom were also set their places in thereview of literature There are 10 teachers of English taking part in thesurvey They come from Nguyen Du High School, and their age range from

25 to 50 Three experienced teachers of English from other schools areinvited to read and evaluate information transfer activities, and there are 220students to give feedback on the IT reading lessons which are experimented.Moreover, to create the most efficient and relevant activities, the stage ofconducting the designing process, including the study of the textbook, theadaptation and designing of the activities, the trial, and the modification ofthose ones have been throughly paid attention to research participants andinstruments The effectiveness was measured by the experiment of five out

of ten activities on two hundred and twenty students of five classes fromNguyen Du high school The results show that IT activities are beneficial onthe part of the learners, and these activities really assist students to exploitreading texts and improve oral skills Basing on the results collected in theexperiment and assessment procedure, the adjustment and modification wereset up to better the activities Reinforcing strong point and improvinglimitations have brought the thesis to a feasible mission of providing eleventhgrade teachers and students of English with useful materials for teaching andlearning reading

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 : Introduction 1

1.Rationale : 1

2 Purpose of research 2

3 Scope of research 2

4 Organization of the research 2

Chapter 2 : Literature review 4

1 What is the information Transfer technique? 4

1.1 What is the Transfer ? 4

1.2 What is the information Transfer technique ? 4

2 Advantages of information Transfer activities 5

2.1 Authenticity & real talks 5

2.2 Communicative tasks 5

2.3 Repetitive tasks 6

2.4 Productive tasks 6

2.5 Development of all skills 6

2.6 Self - Access 7

3 Major types of information transfer tasks 7

3.1 Maps and plans 7

3.2 Grids and tables 9

3.3 Diagram and charts 9

3.4 Diaries and calendars 10

3.5 Miscellaneous lists, forms, coupons 11

4 Teaching reading comprehension of English 12

4.1 Shape of a reading lesson 12

4.2 Feature of a good reading technique 14

5 Reasons for using information transfer activities in the teaching of reading: 14

5.1 Diversifying the technique for the teaching of Reading 15

5 2 Helping students with the whole content of the reading text 16

5.3 Practicing information transfer for real life communication 16

6 Aspects of applying the IT technique in the context of Vietnamese Upper Secondary school classrooms of English 17

6.1 Reproduction, explanation and summary 17

6.2 Testing/ Checking students’ understanding of a Reading text 18

6.3 Should Information Transfer activities be used in post-reading or while-reading stage? 19

7 Stages of conducting information - transfer activities 19

7.1 The study of the textbook 20

7.2 The selection, adaptation, and designing of the activities 20

7.2 The Trial of the activities 20

7.4 The modification of the activities 20

8 Relevant studies 21

Chapter 3 : Methodology 24

1 Research Participants 24

2 Data collection 24

3 Data analysis 26

Chapter 4 : Finding and discussion 27

1 Finding from the questionnaires for teachers 27

2 Finding from the teachers' evaluation forms 34

3 Finding from the students' comments 37

Chapter 4 : Conclusions and implications 42

1 Conclusion 42

2 Reference 45

3 Appendice 47

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

CLT : Communicative language teaching EFL : English as a Foreign language

IT : Information transfer N: Number of information

LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Question 1 Do you think that exploiting the content of reading texts is important? 27

Table 2: Question 3 Do you often use Information Transfer activities in the teaching of reading? 28

Table 3: Question 4 Which stage in a reading lesson do you think Information Transfer activities are best applied? 28

Table 4: Question 7 What are your suggestions to make the teaching of reading more effective and interesting? 31

Table 5 : Criterion 1 The activity is easy to understand and carry out 34

Table 6 : Criterion 2 The activity is suitable to most of the students’ levels 34

Table 7 : Criterion 3 The activity is varied, interesting and motivating 35

Table 8 : Criterion 4 The activity is new and creative 35

Table 9 : Criterion 5 The activity helps students to exploit the content of the Reading text effectively 35

Table 10 : Criterion 6 The activity encourages the students to develop all the skills .36

Table 11 : Criterion 7 The activity is meaningful and contextualized 36

Table12 : Question 1 Is the activity easy to understand ? 37

Table13 : Question 2 Is the activity suitable in comparison with your level? 37

Table14 : Question 3 Is the activity interesting and motivating? 38

Table15 : Question 4 Is the activity new and creative? 38

Table16 : Question 5 Is the activity useful for you to exploit the content of the reading text? If yes, how many percentages can you obtain? 39

Table17 : Question 6 Are you willing to participate in other activities like this one? If yes, how often? 39

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 - Question 2 Which activities do you often use for content exploitation? 27Figure 2- Question 5 What are the advantages of Information Transfer activities? 29Figure 3 - Question 6 What difficulties may you face whencarrying out this kind 30Figure 4 - Question 8: Why do you think information – transfer activities should

be used in Vietnamese language reading comprehension classrooms? 32Figure 5 - Question 9: By using information - transfer activities in teachingreading, teachers want…? 33

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1.Rationale

Reading comprehension is an important language skill Practising thereading skill of English as a foreign language is a matter of much concern bylanguage teachers In many classes of English in Viet Nam, a reading lesson isgenerally taught through three stages, namely, pre- reading, while - reading andpost - reading However the techniques of teaching reading comprehesion are ingeneral repeated and not so interesting In order to make the lessons more excitingand creative, to help students acquirres language skills of English, new technicquesshould be applied and one of them is the information transfer

The information Transfer technique has been so far considered much attention òthe language teaching researchers.Together with this it has been considered aneffective technique in English teaching methology There have been alot ofresearchers on this technique Widdowson, for instance, insists on using InformationTransfer technicque for designing writing exercises.(Widdowson,1978) In addition,Storla suggests using it in writing for critical thinking.(1993) Johnson alsodescribe the advantages of InformationTransfer for the teaching of reading andlistening (1981) Moreover, Prodromou believes that Information Transfer presented

in a visual form as a starting – point for practicing the four skills is another hallmark

of the communicative approach.(Prodromou, 1992)

Actually, these researchers just talk about Information Transfer in theory So, fromtheory to reality, Truong (1999) makes an application of the Information Transfertechnique in teaching reading comprehension in Vietnamese secondary schoolclassrooms of English

In Vietnam, particularly in Hue city not only Truong (1999) has made an application

of the techinique in Vietnamese secondary school classroom, using English 11Therefore, the researchers would like to carry out this research to investigate howInformation Transfer used for teaching reading at Nguyen Du high school in HaTinh Moreove, in the hope that IT reading lessons of Tieng Anh 11 can be popular

as an interesting technique in the teaching of reading comprehension This may be

The aims of the study are

- To provide the effective and interesting information transfer to 11th grade teachersand students of English

- To design activities and bring in to use their advantages to make the teachingproceduce more effectively and successfully and thus contributing to theimproverment of the teaching and learning foreign languages

3 Scope of research

- The study deals with information transfer activities for the teaching of readingusing " TIENG ANH 11" at Nguyen Du high school in Ha Tinh province

4 Organization of the research

The study consists of the following parts:

Chương 1, "The Introduction", Presents the rationales for research, defines the purposes, research questions, scope and orgnization of the study

Chương 2 presents a summary of theoretical background of thr research.

It consits of 8 main sections:

What is the information transfer technique?, Advantages of informationTransfer activities, Major types of information transfer tasks, Teaching readingcomprehention of english, Reason for using Information Transfer activities in theteaching of reading, Aspects of applying the Information Transfer technique in thecontext of Vietnamese upper secondary school classrooms of English, Stages ofconducting the designing process and Relevant studies

Chương 3, "Research methodology" presents the detailed procedure of the study:

research subjects, date collection, date analysis

Chương 4, "Finding and Discussion"includes findings from the questionnaires for

teachers, the teachers' evaluation forms and date analysis

Chương 5, "Conclusion and Implications"presents an overall conclusion of the

study, Pedagogical Implications for teachers, limitation of the research and some suggested lesson plans of Information Transfer activity applied to teach English

reading lesson for the 11th graders at NGUYEN DU High school

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This study deals with the Information Transfer technique (IT) and scopes ofthe application to help the language teachers make the reading lesson more effective

as well as involve all students in the creative, meaningful and interesting activities

of content exploitation

1 What is the information Transfer technique?

1.1 What is the Transfer?

According to the Oxford Advanced Learners' Dictionary (2005) transfer(information / music, ect ) is to "copy information, music, an idea, etc from onemethod of recording or presenting it to another " or " to be recorded or presented in

a different way" ( P.1571) For example, we can transfer data to the disk in a fewseconds

1.2 What is the information Transfer technique ?

There are several definitions concerning to the Information Transfer technique.First of all, an Information Transfer activity, according to David Palmer (1990,p.79) ‘is an activity involving the reproduction of information either from adiagrammatic or semi-diagrammatic form into fully linguistic form or vice versa’

With a similar view, Short and Candlin (1977, p.144) state that InformationTransfer technique is the ‘’Transformation of instance discourses from one type into

INFORMATION TRANSFER

(chart, graphs, tables, maps, outlines, ect.)

of Information Transfer from one skill to another: in this case, from reading verbaland/or non-verbal information to speaking/writing’’ (Brown, 2004, p.210).

It can be inferred from the definitions that Information Transfer technique isconverting of the content of the verbal language form into the non-verbal languageform and vice versa to make the Information easy to understand and convey

2 Advantages of information Transfer activities

Information Transfer is a visual kind of information that appears in variety ofform such as tables, charts, graphs, outlines, maps, memos Obviously, this kind ofdata is very common in our life and has many advantages Palmer once describles itsbenefits in his papers (Palmer 1991)

2.1Authenticity & real talks

Acording to Palmer, information - Transfer activities are often used in theEnglish speaking environment as an authentic task that native speakers commonly

do in their everyday lives For example, nowadays, in office, a lot of texts anddocuments are not written directly in the form of the text but they are tended to betransferred into the diagrammatic or semi- diagrammatic forms of time tables,memos, charts, and diagrams, that " aims to catch our attention and facilitate ourreading " (Truong Vien 1999, p3 ) Futhermore, as we prepare for the trip or journey

to other cities or countries, we can not help filling in some forms, supplyinginformation about accommodation, entertainment, which are both linguistic andsymbolic

2.2 Communicative tasks

A part from real tasks, IT activities are also communicative otherwise peoplewould not be wasting time doing it When you book your flight at the travel agent,

the clerk will interpret the information on the computer screen for you and help you

to communicate with it

2.3 Repetitive tasks

Normally, the information presented in a diagrammatic form or diagrammatic form is frequently a concentrated collection of similar items ofinformation, for example, repeatedly the train time table shows us when the trainwill depart from, stop at and arrive at a limited number of places This means thatthe linguistic equivalent may well be expressed by repetition of a certain structure

semi-In this way, semi-Information Transfer activities can be very appropriate to controlledpractice stage of a lesson

2.5 Development of all skills

Ideally, an information Transfer activity forms a kind of pivot around whichany of the language skill may revolve

(Adapted from the original version Palmer 2004 )

This Figure shows how a diagram or ‘’ visual’’ may be built up from informationread or heard by the students The visual then becomes the basic of a second IT inwhich the student reproduces the information linguistically in either spoken orwritten form

VISUAL

2.6 Self - Access

Information - Transfer provides a framework for useful self -access activitiesfor developing listening and reading skills beacause it helps students to check theirperformance against the correct "visual" data or objects

Evidently, the advantage is that information transfer involves only a few necessarywords students are asked to reconstruct the information in spoken form, and then inwritten ones.This practice is a great benefit to students Doing this kind of workshelps them gain cofidence that they can articulate on their own, rather than justrepearing or copying of the others

Another benefit of information - transfer is that it is open-ended This kind ofdata gives the students a topic and quite a bit of information But it is alwayspossible for the students to add their own ideas and interpretation

3.Major types of information transfer tasks

In a language class, according to Palmer (1990) IT task may falls into anumber of basic categories through a number of scenarios often at several languagelevels

3.1 Maps and plans

In this type of task, the student has to label, mark positions or plot routes on amap or a plan

- Classroom

Input: Description of students’s seating in a class (L R)

Task: Label desks with names of appropriate students

- Holiday tour

Input: Overhead dialogue, recounting or planning a holiday (L)

Travel agent’s itinerary (R)

Postcard from family on holiday (R)

Task: Plot route on map labeling places of interest and dates

- Weather forecast

- Input: Weather forecast (L)

- Task: Enter weather symbols on a map

- Input: Description (LR) of quests seated at a dinner party

- Task: Label quests on diagram of table

Other possibilities include: plan of a street; architect’s plan; underground (tube) map; theatre seating plan; plans of traffic accidents

It is quite often possible to provide the same basic information input at anumber of different language levels For example, the description of the seatingplan above can be quite elementary; as in: Mr Brown is information transfering atthe head of the table On his left is Mrs Smith and on his right is Mr White Mr.Green is siinformation transfering on Mrs Smith’s left., or it can employ morecomplex discourse, in which case the difficulty of the task is increased as the studenthas to filter out redundant information as well as recognize the functions of complexcohesive devices Mrs Smith, however, is talking right across the tables to Mr.White, the tall white- haired gentleman on the other side of Mrs Jones Thisbecomes a sort of puzzle and indeed might be as a problem-solving task in whichthe student has to seat the quests amicably according to their likes and dislikes Forexample: Lady Grey is quite a snob and insists on a siinformation transfering an theplace of honor at the head of the table She is quite very jealous of Miss Sidebothambecause they both like Mr Gable, a bachelor, etc

3.2 Grids and tables

These are pieces of information described as semi-diagrammatic ones andthey include railway timetables, car – hire price lists or any kind of informationanalyzed into tabular form

Selected scenarios

- Passport details

Input: Interview at passport office ( L )

Literary or police description of person ( R)

Task: fill in ‘’ personal details: page of passport’’

- Train or bus time tables

Input: Telephone enquiries answered by railway/bus enquiry office (L)

Task: Complete a semi – complete timetable with destinations or times given inthe dialogue

- Football results and pools

Input: Authentic radio report of the football results, or at amore advanced level,randomly organized recordings of outside broadcast commentators giving theresults of their particular matches (L )

Newspaper report of the day’ s football ( R )

Task: Tabulate information in simplified form

Other possibilities include: flight announcements board; surveys and polls, classtimetables; class ainformation transferendance register

3.3 Diagram and charts

This kind of material, already extensively used in ESP (English for SpecificPurposes) courses, can, with careful selection, be equally effective in generalEnglish classes

Selected scenarios

- Family tree

Lecture on process, such as education system ( L )

Semi – technical texts on processes, e.g photography, houseplant care, operating

a washing machine, applying for a tax rebate ( R )

Bank clerk telling customer how to get travel’s cheques changed ( L )

Task: Label and possibly complete diagram illustrating the process

Other possibilities include: temperate and climate graphs/histograms; sociograms; pie graphs

3.4 Diaries and calendars

Transfer involving plans, dates and times often give useful practice indiscriminating numbers at less advanced levels

Selected scenarios

- Office holidays

Input: Employees ask boss for permission to take their holidays at certain times ( L)

Employees write leinformation transferer to boss on same subject ( R )

Task: Plot holidays on Year Planner

- Personal engagements

Input: Secretary tells boss his program for the week ( L ) Some of thisinformation may come in the form of leinformation transferers or memos to beprocessed by the students ( R )

Task: Enter details in authentic diary

Other possibilities include: doctor’s and dentist’s an appointment book; hotelregister

Note: Remember that some of these task can be very much simplified by giving

some of the linguistic information to the students before asking them to do thelistening task.For example in the second scenarios, the engagements that are givenorally by the secretary can also be given in jumbled order on thestudents’Worksheet Their task is then to recognize them and copy them into theright days of the week as they listen

3 5 Miscellaneous lists, forms, coupons, etc.

The basic strategies used in the above scenarios can be extended andcombined to suit a wide range of situations and visual formats

Selected scenarios

- Programme design

Input: Conversation at theatre booking agency ( L )

Radio advertisement for play or film ( L )

Task: Design a programme or poster giving full details about the play or film

- Menu prices

Input: Dialogue between couple dining and waiter ( L )

Gastronomic newspaper article ( R )

Task: Write or complete details on menu

- Shopping list

Input: Wife sending husband on errand ( L )

Recipe instruction ( R )

Task: Write shopping list

Other possibilities include: car rental forms; list of dietary requirements

4 Teaching reading comprehension of English

4.1 Shape of a reading lesson

Obviously, reading skills are an essential part of communicative competence.They are also "essential for learning a language since they anable students to acquireinsights and information and to obtain sucess in communicating with others "( wallace, stariha,walberg,2004,p.7).Therefore, the teaching of reading has aprominent place in language programs today Its procedure follows exactly thesame procedure of teaching a skill lesson This simple framework forms theteacher's lesson plan in a meaningful, task - based way Specifically , there are threestages : pre- reading , while- reading and post- reading Activities used in these pre,while, and post stages give students practical tools for using the four skills in reallife The features of these three stages, extracting from BA Upgrade Englishlanguage teaching Methodology ( Nguyen Bang et al 2003 pp 85 ) are presented asfollows

Pre- reading stages

This stage is carried out before the students begin reading the text It plays

an essential part in the whole process of a reading lesson, because it is difficult toask student to read the text without the preperation that involves such activities aspre- reading questions , pre- teaching vocabulary Accoding to William ( 1984 : 37 ), the purpose of reading stage are :

- to introduce and arouse interest in the topic

- to motivate learners by giving a reason for reading

- to provide some language preperation for the text

Normally, pre- reading stage often makes up about one - tenth of the timeallocation for the whole lesson However, depending on each lesson , it may lastshorter or longer Before delivering activities for this stage , the teacher needs topay careful attention to the objectives of the lesson , the situation of teaching andlearning , the students' needs in to account

While reading stage

William (1984 p:38) states that while reading stage is the main part of areading lesson with the following specific aims :

- to help understanding of the writer's purpose

- to help understanding of the text structure

- to clarify text content

The teacher, at the while reading stage , needs to help their studentscomprehend the text thoroughly whlie the students have to apply to the best theirreading skills like skimming , scanning , quessing ect To understand the text as well

as the writer's purpose conveyed through the reading text Apperently, timeallocation for this is nearly two- thirds of the whole lesson

Post reading stage

It is the last stage of a reading lesson It is the time for students’reproduction of what they have learned in the while stage in reference to their world.What they reproduce will reflect how well they comprehend the text in associationwith their daily lives In William's view (1984 p: 39), the post -reading stage isaimed at consolidating or reflecting upon what has been read and relating the text tothe learners' own knowledge, interests or views Normally, it takes ten or fifteenminutes to complete all activities at this stage

To conclude, the above - mentioned stages are essential for a reading lesson However, it is not necessary to carry out all these stages mechanically on everyoccasion Depending on the purposes of a reading lesson, the teacher may applythese stages as well as allocate time for each stage appropriately

2 Feature of a good reading technique

In any lesson, the teacher may use several technique to make his or herlesson more interesting and successful, The success of a lesson depends much onwhat type technique the teacher uses and suitablity of it to the lesson

Generally, a good reading technique can be described with following characteristics( Nguyen et al, 2003 p 85)

Firsly, it gets students to think before they read Specifically , it encouragesthem to link what they expect to read with what they know about the subject

Secondly, a good technicque provides student with a purpose for reading.Furthermore, it also provides a " reading guide" something which guides students'reading by focusing their attention through picture, question, grids, visual, etc Fourthly, it gets students to make a clear response As the teacher can not see insidestudent's heads to find out if they understand or not, a good technicque externalizersthe understanding process by making students complete a task which shows theteacher they have understood This can be done by putting ticks , filling in a grid ,understanding something, ect Moreover, it teaches students to infer meaningbetween the lines of a text Finally, it exploits differences in answers through pair-work share / compare activities and there fore gives students a purpose for reading asecond or third time

5 Reasons for using information transfer activities in the teaching of reading

The central characteristic of communicative language teaching is that itfocuses information transfer attention on the abilities to understand and conveyinformation content One way to practice (and test) these abilities is through ITactivities

According to Prodromou ( 1992 ), information presented in a visual as astarting-point for practicing the four skills is another hallmark of CommunicativeApproach, there IT activities do have a major part to paly in the class for thefollowing reasons:

 Information in a visual form is comprehensive whether a student islinguistically gifted or not, visual information is a kind of universallanguage

 By integrating the four skills, IT technique ensure that different learningstyles are catered for

 Chart and diagram lend themselves to information – gap activities inwhich language is used for a communicative purpose

 Information can be distributed in such a way that less confident studentsmay receive more support in their task than more confident students

 Students can often work together to complete a task, thus encouraging anopen and sharing atmosphere among students of mixture of talents andpersonalities

And in the context of teaching Reading at Vietnamese Upper Secondary schoolsrecently, IT activities should be introduced due to the fact that :

5.1 Diversifying the technique for the teaching of Reading

Teaching reading skills of English has been so far considered the mostimportant part to develop for students However, the process of teaching areading text in English, especially the steps of exploiting content has notbeenvery effective since there are only few techniques which are repeatedly used Inthe research by Truong Vien (1999), of the Reading teaching techniques, thecommon ones are frequently used at many Upper Secondary schools contextstudying are:

Question – answer

Finding synonyms/antonyms

Gap-filling

True-false

Among the four techniques above, the question – answer technique seems to

be most usually used in classes They can be employed after the language teacherexplains vocabulary and structure These techniques to some extents have satisfied

the purposes of teaching reading because they help students understand and masterthe ideas in the reading texts However, if these techniques are repeatedly applied inany reading class, what will happen? Students may fell boring and less interesting inthe lesson So it is hard for teacher to involve students in his teaching as well asmake the teaching procedure effective any more The IT technique with itsadvantages will bring a new wind into the teaching process IT will help make theactivities refresher more completive at the same time encourage students’involvement in the lessons Students will be excited to join the various, challengingand creative activities and therefore the atmosphere of the class will be moreainformation transferractive and effervescent Then this may lead to a successfulreading lesson for teacher

5.2 Helping students with the whole content of the reading text

These techniques, as mentioned above, just focus on assisting students’comprehension of separate ideas or parts of the reading text By this way, studentscan not know how each idea connect with the other ideas and thus hard to get theglobal idea of the text Of course, those techniques can not be absent from thereading lesson but that is not enough for the purpose of the content exploitationsince a reading lesson is expected to help students with the detailed as well as theoverall ideas One solution is that some teachers use the summary technique tofulfill the aim of content study This solution seems to be not successful because ofthe fact that students’s writing skill are not so good as desired while their summaryskill are still much limited The IT technique with most main information of areading text being transfer to deal with the partial and general content of the text.Also, through these activities, students can improve their ability of generalizationand find the process of study a fascinated challenge

3 Practicing information transfer for real life communication

One advantage of IT technique is that it is a communicative task Therefore,nowadays we can see most of information presented in visual and symbolic formanywhere In an office, for instance, we also notice that from the system oforganization, timetables, memos, plans, etc, are not purely in linguistic forms butthey are in forms of outline, diagrams, charts or tables As we travel, we often deal

with forms such as tourist brochure and map, immigration and application forms,accommodation and restaurant information, etc., most of which are both in linguisticand symbolic, that aim to catch our ainformation transferention or facilitate ourreading So, if we, the language teacher can apply this technique in class, this will be

a wonderful preparation for students later Students are encouraged to practice andget acquainted with these type of reading text while they are still at schools Indoing so, students can develop the skill

6 Aspects of applying the IT technique in the context of Vietnamese Upper Secondary school classrooms of English

Information Transfer (IT) technique with its advantages can be widelyapplied in the Reading lessons However, when and how to apply it effectively inthe procedure of reading teaching should be carefully considered That is whyTruong ( 1999 ) in his research on application of IT technique in Vietnamesesecondary school classroom has given the two main purposes when using IT in aReading lesson:

6.1 Reproduction, explanation and summary

For this purpose, the language teacher can design a diagrammatic form thatsummarizes the main ideas of one or more than one paragraph, or a whole text forthe step of content reproduction, consolidation, or summary With a diagrammaticform presented on a poster, which contains most major information of the passagestudied, the teacher may do the model first by reconstructing the ideas on the formverbally and then inviting students to do the oral reproduction If the diagrammaticform includes too many details, the reproduction should be divided into parts so that

it is easy for students to follow It is necessary for the teacher to read the textcarefully, pay ainformation transferention to the topic sentence and other importantideas to create a tidy, appreciate and good-looking diagram After each part, theteacher can have students to recall what he has said and lastly have them do thewhole reconstruction Truong Vien also shows us an experience that a clear andbeautiful diagrammatic form with an uncomplicated reproduction will makestudents unreluctant to participate in the activity With IT , students are encourage touse their own grammar and structure rather than follow closely the language in the

6.2 Testing/Checking students’ understanding of a Reading text

Another purpose of introducing Information Transfer in the reading teachingprocedure is to test or check what students gave gained from the text Therefore, toserve this aim, the language teacher may design a diagrammatic form includingmost main ideas in the reading text in one or more than one paragraph But unlikethe former purpose, instead of providing all the information on the form, this timethe teacher should leave some spaces which are numbered in order for students tocomplete

For best result, the teacher may have students work in groups Afterpreparing a poster with the form on, the teacher sticks it on the board and let timefor the group to finish it Truong Vien once again suggests the teacher deliverhandouts for each group or use the overhead transparency instead of a poster tomake the activity more challenging and interesting Nowadays, with the help ofcomputer, the teacher may design this activity on the Power Point software to savetime and gain a beinformation transferer effect According to Vien, the time control(the teacher turns the machine on for a while for students’ equal chance of readingand decoding the form and then turn if off for answer) and the competition amonggroups will be the essential factors to bring the competitive and ebullientatmosphere to class Then the teacher may ask some representatives from somegroups to go to the board and write down their answer or he/she just collects theanswer to check Giving feedback is really necessary in this stage and should bedone right after that

6.3 Should Information Transfer activities be used in post-reading or while-reading stage?

As said above, most of the Information Transfer activities are usually applied

in the content study stage This is because the Information Transfer technique aims

to strengthen and consolidate students’ understanding as well as help to checkstudents’ comprehension of a reading text These two purposes both serve the sameobjectives-help students master the content of the reading text in a global andthrough way

Besides, Information Transfer can be also applied in the post reading stagewith the writing exercises based on the charts they have learnt In so doing, thelanguage teacher has students translate the data from into the linguistic form Let’stake an example, with the diagram available in the While-Reading Stage, the teachermay ask students to write a summary of the reading text in students’ own wordsusing the information from the chart given By this way, students can develop all oftheir skills in an integrated way

In the recent years, a number of studies on using Information Transfer(IT)

in teaching and learning English have increased greatly.In this section, someprevious studies on using IT are presented firstly.Then studies on teaching andlearning in High School in Ha Tinh are addressed to foundation for my study

Concerning the importance of IT, according to the study on “Information TransferTechniques in ESL/FL Reading and Listening Comprehension”conducted byLatorre, Guillermo, Garfinkel and Alan, the result of the research showed that

In the recent years, a number of studies on using Information Transfer in teachingand learning English have increased greatly.In this section, some previous studies onusing IT are presented firstly.Then studies on teaching and learning in High School

in Ha Tinh are addressed to foundation for my study

Concerning the importance of IT, according to the study on “InformationTransfer Techniques in ESL/FL Reading and Listening Comprehension”conducted

by Latorre, Guillermo, Garfinkel and Alan, the result of the research showed that

7 Stages of conducting information - transfer activities

The procedure of selecting, designing, adapting and modifying theInformation Transfer activities may be implemented according to the stages above.This can be seen as a general description of the whole processes the designer hasfollowed

7.1 The study of the textbook

This first important step I have taken when information transfering to designthe activities is to read the texts carefully to get an overall understanding about the

reading text content In so doing, I sorted out the topic sentences and otherimportant ideas necessary to put in the diagrams

2 The selection, adaptation, and designing of the activities

From the initial ideas I got after reading textbook, a variety of suitable chart

or diagrams were selected from a series of possible ones The selected charts ofdiagrams were then adapted or designed so as to make them appropriate to thecontent of each reading text Certainly, the principles of selecting, adapting anddesigning the Information Transfer activities were sharpen and noticed in this veryimportant stage

All the activities were performed in a consistent form which includes thetime alloinformation transfered for each activity, the preparation of teaching aidsneeded, the class arrangement and the procedure of each activity

3 The Trial of the activities

With an aim to examine the effectiveness of the Information Transferactivities, the researcher designs all of the IT activities and teach them in readinglessons and are evaluated by 10 teachers in Nguyen Du high school in Ha tinhprovince Five activities from units 10, 12, and 13 were experimented in 5 classes

of eleventh grade in Nguyen Du High school The findings of the trial were reflected

in the evaluation forms for teachers and the comment forms for students

4 The modification of the activities

The data collected from the evaluation and experiment procedure served theaim of modifying the activities so that some activities can overcome the limitationsand shortcomings that may occur in designing Additionally, all the activities werewritten information transfer and modified on the slides of Power Point software tomake them suitable for teaching and learning with computer

8 Relevant studies

In the recent years, a number of studies on using Information Transfer inteaching and learning English have increased greatly In this section, some previousstudies on using Information transfer are presented firstly.Then studies on teachingand learning in High School in Ha Tinh are addressed to foundation for my study.Concerning the importance of information transfer, according to the study on

“Information Transfer Techniques in ESL/FL Reading and Listening

Comprehension”conducted by Latorre, Guillermo, Garfinkel and Alan, the result

of the research showed that : Information transfer techniques in the teaching ofreading and listening in foreign language and English as a second languageclassrooms are discussed Students may be presented with a written or spoken textand provided incomplete visual stimuli to be completed with information drawnfrom the text The idea is that the learners are helped in understanding the text bymeans of a nonverbal device such as a diagram, graph, or table When simpleknowledge is the objective, it can provide assistance in familiarizing students withvocabulary At higher levels, it can assist students in applying specific criteria in theevaluation of a text Information transfer is ideal for testing and helpingcomprehension of nonliterary discourse Other types of information transfer mayinclude ordering a sequence of pictures, comparing text and pictures, andcompleting documents Information transfer devices focus on the function oflanguage in a given text and draw students' attention to the logical organization ofthe text, to the ways in which the writer has deployed information, and to howlanguage reflects this organization These activities require students to concentrate

on what words, sentences, and other language units do in a given text It isconcluded that information transfer exercises are justified on both linguistic andteaching bases and are rooted in the organizational nature of the written text and onthe hierarchical structure of learning Sample exercises are included (SW)

Other reasearch was carried out by Triya Heni Riyanti, Hery Yufrizal, Sudirman Sudirman (2013) with title "Comparative study between student'sreading achievement taught through information transfer and translation teachnique"

This research was intended to find out whether there was a significant difference ofstudents’ reading achievement in comprehending authentic material taught throughinformation transfer and translation technique and to find out which of the twotechniques was more effective for teaching reading of authentic material Thisresearch took place in SMPN 1 Natar It consists of two classes of the third grader

Control group pre-test post-test design was applied in this research The instrument

used in this research was reading test in the form of 25 multiple choices Then, the

data were analyzed by using Independent t-test with Statistically Package for Social

Science (SPSS) version 15.0 Based on the result of the test, the significant

difference was determined by p<0.05 The t-test revealed that the result was significant (p=0.012) in which (t-value > t-table), 2.598 > 2.000 It indicated that

there was a significant difference in students’ reading achievement before and afterbeing taught through information transfer and translation technique Besides,information transfer was more effective than translation in increasing students’reading comprehension achievement because it helped students to comprehend thetext given by using self-questioning strategy Thus, it is concluded that informationtransfer technique can be applied and recommended as a reference to teach English

in reading skill

Similarly, in 2012, a study of Amanah with title:"The effect of InformationTransfer and connection questions techniques on students reading comprehensionachievemet" The objectives of the study were to find out (1) the different erectinformation transfer and connection questions techniques on students readingcomprehension achievement and (2) which of these techniques is the mosteffective.The hypotheses are the students reading comprehension achievementtaught by using information transfer and connection questions techniques is higherthan students taught conventionally and there is one of the techniques which is themost effective among the other techniques The study was conducted at State JuniorHigh School 3 Lubuk Pakam The population was the Grade VIII students Thesamples were taken randomly (random sampling) using lottery system As a quasiexperimental research, the research was conducted by giving treatments to bothexperimental groups The control group was taught conventionally Grade VIII Awas taught by applying information transfer technique and Grade VIII 1) was taught

by applying connection questions technique The data was analyzed using ANOVAtechnique with significance probability a = 0.05 The analyses show (1) mean ofgain score of experimental group using information transfer technique was 33,25,(2) mean of gain score of experimental group using connection questions techniquewas 29,05 and (3) mean of gain score of control group was 18,15 The findings ofthe study are (1) the students reading comprehension achievement taught usingInformation transfer technique is higher than the students reading comprehensionachievement taught using connection questions technique in which F count was19,768 and F table 3,0738 with significance 0,000 < a 0,05 (2) Information transfertechnique is the most effective technique in improving the students readingcomprehension achievement This was analyzed by using Tuckey test Based on thefindings, it can be concluded that information transfer and connection questiontechniques significantly affected the students reading comprehension achievement.Because of that, both techniques can be applied on reading comprehensioninstruction in order to improve the students reading comprehension achievement

Another piece of research on "Transfer of reading comprehention skills to L2

in the linked to mental representations of the text and to L2 working memory" iscarried out by Catherine Walter (2004) The research reveals that : Two notionsfrom cognitive psychology were examined in relation to the transfer of reading

comprehension skills from L1 to L2 (1) The notion that reading comprehentionprocceds by the comprehender's building of a mental structure represeting the textand (2) the notion of working memory 2 groups of french learner of English ( atupper- intermadiate and lower - intermediate proficiency levels) participated in thestudy members of borth groups were proficient comprehend texts in L2 English ,even when the lower- intermediate learner had no problem in processing theindividual sentences of those the text Performance in pro- form resolution in twodistance conditions provided strong support for the hypothesis that the lower -intermediate group had failed to transfer to L2 th ability to build well structuredmental representations of texts , while the upper - intermediate group had succeeded

in transferring this ability This structure- building ability was in turn linked to thedevelopment of working memory in L2

CHAPTER 3 : METHODOLOGY

1 Research Participants

It took the researcher a lot of time to conduct the information transferactivities in order that these activities are suitable and effective for teachingreading The participants are as follows:

- 10 teachers of English, who are teaching English at Nguyen Du high school,take part in the survey They come from Nguyen Du High School, and their agerange from 25 to 50 Most of them graduated from university in the field ofTEFL

- Three experienced teachers of English from other schools are invited toobserve and evaluate information transfer activities, they come from NguyenCong Tru High school, and Nghi Xuan high school

- 220 students, give feedback on the IT reading lessons which are experimented.They are all 11th graders from five classes at Nguyen Du high school Fifteeninformation transfer activities were designed and five of them from unit 10, unit

12 and unit 13 were experimented in five classes of 11th at Nguyen Du highschool The experiment was carried out by the researcher to examine theeffectiveness of the proposed activities

Besides, there are 60 teachers of English who receive IT reading lessons andreturn feedback through mail or email

The questionnaires are aimed to investigate the teachers’ ainformationtransferitude towards Information Transfer activities as well as theadvantages and disadvantages when carrying out the activities in readinglesson

 Evaluation forms for teachers

This kind of form includes 7 criteria for assessing the effectiveness of thedesigned activities There were 55 forms which were distributed to 5teachers to evaluate the activities at home and 5 forms for other 5 teachers toaccess the activities when they are being experimented in class So, each ofthe designed activities are under the evaluation of experienced teachers Allthe forms were returned and received a great deal of precious comments andsuggestions

The evaluation forms for teacher concentrate on the following issues:

- The teachers’ information transfer attitudes towards the proposedInformation Transfer activities: this issue is aimed at examining whether theactivities are easy to understand, whether they are new and creative and

whether they are interesting enough to encourage students to communicate Itexamines the relevance of the activities to lesson

- The effectiveness of the activities when being experimented in class:

This issue investigates the teachers’ comments on the effect of the activities

on development of students’ communicative skills and whether they helpstudents to reconstruct the reading texts or check their understanding of thetexts as well

 The comment forms for students

This kind of form includes 6 questions and was dispensed to 220 studentsfrom 5 classes These classes were chosen to do the piloting procedure Allthe forms were returned

The comment forms for students focus on investigate the following issues:

- The students’ information transfer attitudes towards the proposedInformation Transfer activities: this issue is aimed at examining whether thestudents can understand the activities and if the activities are suitable to theirlevels

- The effectiveness of the activities when being experimented in class:

This issue investigates the students’ comments on the effectiveness of theactivities in helping students to reproduce the text contents and check

Their comprehension of the reading texts as well as developing theircommunicative skills

CHAPPTER 4 : FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

1 Finding from the questionnaires for teachers

Table1: Question 1 Do you think that exploiting the content of reading texts is important?

Degree Number of respondents( No./10) Percentage (%)

comprehension Students must understand thoroughly what the text is about beforedoing any other activities On the contrary, 1 out of 10 investigated teachers arguedthat students don’t have to master the text contents clearly but just grasp the generalideas of the texts This is because they think that in a reading lesson, students aresupposed to practice all the four skills, not only reading comprehension skill

Figure 1 - Question 2 Which activities do you often use for content exploitation?

Question-B Finding synonym/anto nym

Table 2: Question 3 Do you often use Information Transfer activities in the teaching of reading?

Degree of frequency Number of respondents

Information transfer technique with its strength turns out not to be frequentlyapplied in the teaching of Reading It is not because the teachers do not recognizethe advantages of this kind of activity but implementing these activities faces manydifficulties That also explains for the reason why 3 out of 10 interviewed teacherssaid they rarely employ this technique in their teaching The number of teacherswho always use the activities is just 2 (20%) while those who sometimes take theactivities are 5 (50%)

Table 3: Question 4 Which stage in a reading lesson do you think Information Transfer activities are best applied?

Figure 2 - Question 5 What are the advantages of Information Transfer activities?