USING GUIDED EXTENSIVE READING TO IMPROVE INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING FOR FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOIUNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES  NGUYỄN THỊ BÍCH HẠNH USING GUIDED EXTENSIVE READING TO IMPROVE I

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



NGUYỄN THỊ BÍCH HẠNH

USING GUIDED EXTENSIVE READING TO

IMPROVE INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING FOR FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS

AT HUNG YEN TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE

(Sử dụng đọc rộng có hướng dẫn nhằm cải thiện việc học từ vựng ngẫu nhiên

cho sinh viên chuyên Anh năm thứ nhất tại trường Cao đẳng

Sư phạm Hưng Yên)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Hanoi – 2015

i

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



NGUYỄN THỊ BÍCH HẠNH

USING GUIDED EXTENSIVE READING TO IMPROVE INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING FOR FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN TEACHERS’

TRAINING COLLEGE

SỦ DỤNG ĐỌC RỘNG CÓ HƯỚNG DẪN NHẰM CẢI THIỆN VIỆC HỌC TỪ VỰNG NGẪU NHIÊN CHO SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN ANH NĂM THỨ NHẤT TẠI TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG SƯ PHẠM HƯNG YÊN M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Dr Hoàng Thị Xuân Hoa

Hanoi - 2015

I hereby certify that this thesis is entirely my own work I have provided fullydocumented references to the others’ work The material in this thesis has notbeen submitted for assessment in any other formal course I also accept all therequirements of ULIS relating to the retention and use of M.A GraduationThesis deposited in the library

Han

oi, October 2015

Nguyen Thi Bich Hanh

I owe my deepest gratitude to my supportive supervisor, Dr Hoang ThiXuan Hoa, for her whole-hearted assistance, encouragement as well as theprofound guidance she gave me while I was doing my research

I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to all myteachers and lecturers in Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University ofLanguages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi fortheir valuable instruction and assistance throughout the realization of this thesis

I am heartily thankful to the administrators, my colleagues, and first-yearstudents at Hung Yen Teachers’ Training College for their willingness toparticipate in the research Without their help, this program could not befulfilled

Last but not least, I am indebted to my beloved family and friends whohave always inspired me to complete this study

The study aimed to examine whether EFL extensive reading could lead toincrease incidental vocabulary of elementary-level EFL learners and evaluatethe learners’ opinions about the ER program The participants were 25 freshmenmajored in English at Hung Yen Teachers’ Training College They were asked

to read 6 graded readers within a ten-week EFL extensive reading program Thevocabulary pretest and posttests were administered to measure learners’incidental vocabulary learning gains in the 162 randomly selected target wordsachieved through the program Results revealed that the significant vocabularygains were achieved by the participants after the EFL extensive readingprogram, suggesting that the EFL extensive reading treatment had produced abeneficial effect on the incidental word learning gains of the participants withelementary EFL competence

TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i

ABSTRACTiii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES vii

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 3

3 Scope of the study 3

4 Method of the study 3

5 Design of the study 3

1.1.3 Effective Extensive Reading 6

1.1.4 Benefits of extensive reading 7

1.1.5 Graded readers 9

1.2 Vocabulary 9

1.2.1 Vocabulary in second language learning 9

1.2.2 Incidental vocabulary learning 10

1.2.3 Reading and incidental vocabulary learning 11

1.2.4 Difficulties in incidental vocabulary learning 13

2.2.1 Action research procedures 22

2.2.2 Selection of reading materials 26

2.3 Instruments 27

2.3.1 Vocabulary tests 27

2.3.2 Questionnaire 28

2.4 Data presentation and data analysis 29

2.4.1 The pretest and posttest 29

2.4.2 T- test 30

2.5 Chapter summary 30

3.1 The results of the tests (Research question 1) 31

3.1.1 The pretest and posttest 31

The sample T-test of the pretest and the immediate posttest 32

3.1.2 The immediate posttest and delayed posttest 33

The sample T-test of the immediate posttest and the delayed posttest 33

3.2 The results of questionnaire (Research question 2) 34

3.2.1 Results of the first part of the questionnaire 35

3.2.2 Result of the second part of the questionnaire 37

3.3 Discussion 38

1 Summary of the findings 40

2 Limitations of the study and recommendations for further study 42

APPENDIX 1: VOCABULARY TEST V

APPENDIX 2: THE VOCABULARY PRETEST RESULTS IX

APPENDIX 3: THE VOCABULARY IMMEDIATE POSTTEST RESULTS X APPENDIX 4: THE VOCABULARY DELAYED POSTTEST RESULTS XI APPENDIX 5: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE XII

APPENDIX 6: CÂU HỎI ĐIỀU TRA XIV

APPENDIX 7: WORKSHEET FOR BOOK REPORTS XVI

APPENDIX 8: A SAMPLE OF LESSON PLAN XVII

GRP Graded Readers Program

HYTTC Hung Yen Teachers’ Training College

SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

ULIS University of Language and International Studies

VNU Vietnam National University, Hanoi

LIST OF FIGURESFigure 1: Action research model of Bride and Schostak (1991)

……… …… 22

LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The Graded Readers Program ……….……… 24 Table 2: The pretest and immediate posttest paired samples statistics ……… 31 Table 3: The sample T-test of pretest and immediate posttest ……….……… 32 Table 4: The immediate posttest and delayed posttest paired samples statistics …….….… 33 Table 5: The sample T-test of immediate posttest and delayed posttest ……… 33 Table 6: Students' opinions about the graded readers program ……….………… 35 Table 7: Students' suggestion for future program ……….……… 37

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Vocabulary plays the most significant role in foreign language learning because it is anelement linking the four language skills in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Inorder to communicate well in a foreign language, students should acquire a greatnumber of words and should know how to use and where to use them

Most EFL learners learn vocabulary passively which can be resulted from severalfactors although students realize the vital importance of vocabulary when learninglanguage First, they consider the teacher's techniques such as explanation for meaning

or definition In this case, language learners have nothing to do in a vocabularylearning section but to listen to their teacher Secondly, students only focus on knowingthe primary meaning of new words Thirdly, students usually only acquire newvocabulary through contextualized new words in their textbooks or when given byteachers during classroom lessons

It is clear that comprehension is one of the most fundamental reasons for reading, andvocabulary, in turn, plays significant part in comprehension Vocabulary clearly makes

a critical contribution to understanding what has been read One important way todevelop vocabulary knowledge is through extensive reading Students by readingextensively will be exposed to variety scope of vocabulary which is necessary inreading comprehension Extensive reading (ER) is an important aspect of any English

as a foreign/second language reading program Bell (2001) stated that ER is a type ofreading instruction program that has been used in EFL settings, as an effective strategy

of developing reading fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary development

The benefits of ER have been widely documented in studies which range in scope fromlarge-scale implementation across whole school districts to a case study of singleparticipant The effectiveness of ER has been generally summarized to provide

1

comprehensible input, to develop reading speed and comprehension which lead tolearners' motivation and confidence and specifically to reinforce, confirm and deepenknowledge of vocabulary (Bell, 2001; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006; Rashidi & Piran, 2011;Richards & Schmitt, 2002; Soltani, 2011) Since ER offers a large number of gradedinteresting materials of various topics in an anxiety-free learning environment forgeneral language improvement, it increases learners' motivation and more positiveattitude towards the target language It is believed that since the learner is reading forpleasure, he will be eager to see what happens next and will therefore try to read morerapidly Moreover, ER can help students to automatically recognize the words thatfrequently appear in the reading texts in a very pleasurable manner While readingextensively, learners are engaged in reading materials as naturally and comfortably aspossible without compulsory or strict follow-up assessments or precise confirmation ofmeaning by teachers, so that learners experience fun and reward rather than stressduring the ER process (Allan, 2009; Hill, 2001) which can help develop students’learning independence, confidence and autonomy (Bell, 2001; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006;Cha, 2009)

It is the fact that until recently, Vietnamese learners have not paid enough attention tovocabulary learning (Tran, 2006) This is true with the context of my students at HungYen Teachers’ Training College (HYTTC) Despite the fact that these students hadpreciously studied English at lower secondary schools for four years, their vocabulary,grammar and practical skills were limited When being informally interviewed, thesestudents showed that they had never read outside the class However, these studentsexpressed their willingness to join in the study since they were really in need ofimproving their vocabulary and reducing vocabulary learning stress All these havemotivated me to carry the study “using guided ER to improve incidental vocabularylearning for first year English major students”

2 Aims of the study

This action research mainly aims to improve first year English-majored students’incidental vocabulary learning in the aspect of word meaning at Hung Yen Teachers’Training College using guided extensive reading

To reach the aims, the researcher supposes two research questions as follows:

1 To what extent can the use of guided extensive reading improve the students’incidental vocabulary learning?

2 What are the students’ opinions about the extensive reading program?

3 Scope of the study

The study was conducted on a class of first year English major students at HYTTConly The study focused on incidental vocabulary learning through a guided gradedreaders program (GRP) in the aspect of meaning Therefore, the findings of theresearch could just reflect the effects of the extensive reading program on the subjects

in the context

4 Method of the study

To find out the answers to the above research questions, an action research (AR) designwas adopted The research followed the model of an AR program as McBride andSchostak (1991) They steps were carried out as follows: (1) Identifying the problem,(2) collecting and analyzing the data, (3) planning and implementing the action, (4)collecting data to monitor change and (5) analyzing and evaluating

5 Design of the study

The study is composed of three following parts:

The study consists of 3 parts:

Part A - Introduction

This part includes rationale, aims, scope and design of the study to introduce andappeal the readers.

Part B

Chapter 1: Literature Review - mentions some theoretical background about

extensive reading, factors affecting the effectiveness of ER and vocabulary leaning.This chapter aims to provide the readers background knowledge to have moreunderstanding about the paper

Chapter 2: Methodology - discusses the methods or approaches employed by

the authors to collect the data for the study

Chapter 3: Results and Discussion - analyses the data collected in the research

process and introduces recommendations to make a good ER program

Part C - Conclusion

In this part, the author offers a summary of the findings, conclusion, recommendations,limitations, and future directions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1.Reading

1.1.1.The roles of reading

It is a fact that reading helps in mental development and is known to stimulate themuscles of the eyes Reading is an activity that involves greater levels of concentrationand adds to the conversational skills of readers It is observed that children andteenager who have habits of reading have comparatively higher intelligence quotients.Therefore, reading skills are essential for not only students’ academic success but alsotheir social and business advancement Gradman and Hanania (1991) investigatedbetween English as a Second Language learners’ language achievement and forty-fourbackground variables which include formal learning experiences, exposure to thelanguage in class and outside, and opinions about English The results indicated that thestrongest effect to be that of extracurricular reading

Walter (2004) stated that reading in a second language call for fast, automatic worddecoding and access to the mental lexicon This means working on building speed andfluency and on learning to recognize at least 10,000 words in the new language Byreading, students got familiar with many topics, acquired a lot of new words and wereeasy to deal with a number of reading text without difficulty Students would gradually

be more confident about the topics in the text and could read and write well

Krashen (2005) mentioned to the power of reading in his work He referred to studiesthat consistently report a positive relationship between the amounts of free readingdone and various aspects of second and foreign language competence as follows Lee,Krashen, and Gribbons (1996) regarding the acquisition of relative clauses; Stokes,Krashen, and Kartcher (1998) regarding the acquisition of the present subjunctives in

Spanish; S Y Lee (2001) regarding factors which make writing difficult To sum up,many researchers have agreed upon the vital role of reading in language learning

1.1.2.Extensive Reading

Many studies have been made on working out a definition of ER Among them is theone done by Lewis and Hill (1992) in which extensive reading means that studentshave general understanding of the text without necessary understanding every word.This definition fails to help learner imagine the whole picture of ER but an aspect ofpurpose of ER However, Bamford and Day (1997) defined ER as an approach toforeign language teaching in general, and to the teaching of foreign language reading inparticular To follow Bamford and Day’s (1997) ideas, Bruton (2002) suggested that

ER can apply to a number of “amounts” The amount of new reading text which isread, the amounts of text consumed and the amount of time spent reading Furthermore,the definition that seems to be more satisfying than those mentioned before isconcluded by Robb and Susser (1989) They defined ER as a language teaching andlearning procedure because it was reading (1) of large quantities of material or longtext, (2) for global or general understanding, (3) with the intention of obtainingpleasure from the text, (4) with students choosing what they want to read, (5) the booksare not discussed in class

After considering various definitions and the context of the study, our workingdefinition is that extensive reading is reading authentic texts in the foreign languagewithout help at students' own level of proficiency for general or global understandingwith primary intention of obtaining pleasure from the materials and done out of classwithout the added pressure of a comprehension test to follow

1.1.3.Effective Extensive Reading

To ensure students get the maximum benefit, extensive reading has to be consistent andsustained (Schmitt, 2000) Lee and Hsu (2009) however warned that many so called ER

provide a large volume of books, and usually require some sort of oral/written reports

or performance tests, which could reduce students’ pleasure of reading Therefore, inplanning an authentic ER program, they suggested teachers take into consideration theduration of time, amount of reading materials accessible for students and finance Another key to successful ER is to supply materials that are comprehensible, relevant,interesting and varied (Nuttall, 1996; Waring & Nation, 2004; Shen, 2008; cited inLee & Hsu, 2009) According to Shen (2008; cited in Lee& Hsu, 2009), toaccomplish those characters, teachers should have students involved in the bookselection process

• Readability: The reading materials should be short and not far beyond students’current linguistic levels (Coady, 1997; Huang & Liou, 2007) Nuttall (1996) stated thatimprovement comes from reading a lot of easy material

• Appropriateness and Authenticity: Because one’s prior background knowledgehas an essential impact on reading comprehension, (Blachowicz & Fisher, 2006;Paynter et al., 2006) the selected materials should be culturally familiar and authentic(Coady, 1997)

• Attraction: The materials need to be appealing to the students (Elley, 1989).When supplied with materials of high interest, students not only read more (Glazer &Giorgis, 2005), they also apply more reading strategies (Coady, 1979)

• Variety: The reading materials should deal with a wide range of subject matter.While narrow reading focuses on in-depth studying of one topic, extensive readinginstead stresses exposing students to different subjects and genres in order to construct/expand their word schemata

1.1.4. Benefits of extensive reading

The specific benefits of extensive reading are diversified and wide-ranging A largenumbers of researched s have provided evidence through experiences for these effects

of extensive reading in language learning Many teachers who have been deeplyinvolved in this instructional approach for a very long time wrote about these benefits.From Day & Bamford (1998), Hill (2001), Nation (2005), Robb (1998), and Waring(1997) the benefits of extensive reading were reported as follows (Porcaro, 2009)

• Extensive reading builds automaticity of word recognition

• Automatic recognition of a word allows lexical access – the automatic calling up frommemory of a word’s meanings and its phonological representation

• Extensive reading builds vocabulary knowledge

• Comprehension and fluent reading depend on automatic word recognition andvocabulary knowledge, and thus are advanced through extensive reading

• Fluent reading allows the reader to move from word-by-word decoding to theprocessing of ideas, which is essential to higher level reading and thinking skills

• Extensive reading builds awareness of grammatical structures and the ability toquickly and accurately process sentence structures

• Extensive reading enhances learners’ background knowledge

• Extensive reading promotes learners’ positive attitude toward reading It fosters theirconfidence and motivation to read

•Extensive reading increases exposure to English The important role ofcomprehensible input in foreign language learning has been strongly demonstrated byKrashen (1993)

• Extensive reading reinforces a grasp of language that is taught in class It providesstudents with an excellent opportunity to consolidate what they have learned, which is

an essential aspect of foreign language learning

• Research studies also show that extensive reading improves learners’ writing skills,listening and speaking skills, and examination results

1.1.5.Graded readers

Richard and Schmidt (2000) defined graded readers as a text written for childrenlearning their mother tongue, or for second foreign language learner, in which thelanguage content is based on a language grading scheme A graded reader (GR) mayuse a restricted vocabulary or a set of grammatical structures Currently, there are awide variety of GRs’ series available worldwide, like the Oxford Bookworm by OxfordUniversity Press, Penguin Graded Readers by Longman, or Cambridge EnglishReaders by Cambridge According to Nation’s (2005) observation, although the levels

in these series are not identical with each other in number of levels, the amount ofvocabulary at each level, or the vocabulary lists on which they are based, they share alot of the vocabulary covered Therefore, it is not important to stick to only one series

of GRs To many language teachers and learners, GRs are attractive option for severalreasons GRs not only offer controlled, systematic, and comprehensive development ofvocabulary and grammar, they also fulfill the different interests and levels of learners After investigating the available materials at the bookstores and the level of mystudents, the researcher decided to choose GRs of the Oxford Bookworm Libraries.Stories in the series seem to be interesting and suitable for the students in this study.Moreover, there are pictures which illustrate the content of the stories Some of thestories are very famous and made into films or plays The researcher also took books alevel 1 for my student, who have never had habit of extensive reading before

1.2 Vocabulary

1.2.1. Vocabulary in second language learning

In the very first part of his book “Vocabulary”, Michael Mc Carthy (1990, p.2, cited inQuach, 2007) stated: “It is the experience of most language teachers that the single,biggest component of any language course is vocabulary No matter how well thestudent learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered,without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just

cannot happen in any meaningful way” It is impossible to deny the role of vocabulary

in communication in an L2 A leaner’s vocabulary size plays a very significant part inhis or her ability to communicate due to the fact that “words are the tools we use tothink, to express ideas and feelings and to learn about the world.” (Johnson andJohnson, 2004, p.1, cited in Quach, 2007)

In the book named “Understanding Vocabulary” (2000, p.16, cited in Quach, 2007),Alexander wrote: “Comprehension improves when you know what the words mean”and “words are currency of communication A robust vocabulary improves all areas ofcommunication – listening, speaking, reading and writing”

All the above quotations highly appreciate the important role of vocabulary in languagelearning, especially in second language learning Thus, teaching vocabulary should be apart of the syllabus and vocabulary should be paid more attention through well-planned lesson of language teachers’ and serious learning behavior of learners

1.2.2. Incidental vocabulary learning

Most of the researches in the special matter of incidental vocabulary learning (Wesche

& Paribakht, 1999) have considered incidental learning as something that is learnedwithout specific focus of attention in a classroom context In Wesche and Paribakht’sdefinition (1999), incidental vocabulary learning refers to the process in which learnersfocus on comprehending meaning of reading and listening contexts rather than on theintentional vocabulary learning and acquire vocabulary as a “by-product” without thelearner’s conscious decision, or intention to learn the words While, Nation (2001) hasindicated that in incidental vocabulary learning the learners’ attention is focused onsome other feature, usually the message that is conveyed by a speaker or a writer.Considerable vocabulary learning can occur even though the learners’ attention is notdirected toward vocabulary learning when the amount of unknown vocabulary is low insuch messages

Another explanation of the incidental learning was set by Haynes (1998, cited byWesche & Paribakht, 1999) The author considered attention rather than intention asthe key to clarifying the construct, as well as a separation of teaching considerationsfrom those of learning She proposed two continua, one of them from “indirectteaching” to “direct teaching” and the other from “incidental learning” (or automatedlearning, involving the learner’s peripheral attention while focal attention is elsewhere)

to “attended learning” (involving focal attention)

Although many researchers have defined incidental vocabulary acquisition fromdifferent aspects, there is not an all-sided and authoritative definition of incidentalvocabulary acquisition In this paper, the researcher adopted the definition made byNation and Wang (1999) that incidental learning takes place when the focus is on thecontent of the story, not on vocabulary learning Learners’ attention is on the meaning

of the text and on developing reading fluency

1.2.3. Reading and incidental vocabulary learning

A case study implemented by Grabe and Stoller (1997) also found significantgains in vocabulary through incidental vocabulary learning through extensive reading.They examined the vocabulary development of an American man learning Portuguesethrough extensive reading The subject received three weeks of instruction and spentadditional hours reading outside of class After being exposed to a large amount ofvocabulary, he showed a 20% increase on the final vocabulary test five months later.They claimed that the study “strongly suggests that reading and vocabulary willdevelop as a result of extensive reading practice”

In the process of incidental vocabulary learning, word knowledge is thought to becumulated and developed gradually through multiple exposures in various readingcontexts Extensive reading, as a form of comprehensible input, has the effect ofproviding learners with rich contexts ideal for vocabulary learning During thereciprocal process of extensive reading, the acquisition of words is the result of

successes in inferring word meanings from a meaningful context and through morereading experiences the developed and matured vocabulary inference ability could inturn contributes to reading level

According to Krashen (1993), extensive reading is considered beneficial for overalllanguage competence and fundamental to vocabulary development as well in the L2learning Researchers such as Krashen believe that similar to L1 word learning, reading

is the major means for acquiring vocabulary and have thus strongly encouraged theimplementation of extensive reading programs in an L2 learning environment(Krashen, 1989) The proposition that most vocabulary is learned incidentally hasappealed to the default argument that learning from context is the only way to accountfor most vocabulary acquisition (Wesche & Paribakht, 1999)

Many studies results support the assumption of the important relationship betweenincidental vocabulary learning and extensive reading Milton and Meara (1995, cited byNagy, 1997) estimated that advanced students could learn words at an annual rate close

to 2,500 in a second language setting A substantial proportion of this growth ispossibly from incidental learning Elley’s (1991) survey of “book flood” studies (theessential element of such studies is increasing the availability of books to the students)showed that L2 learners tended to benefit more from an increase in volume of readingthan do L1 learners because they encountered unfamiliar words at a greater rate thanL1 learners The study suggested that language learning was for the most partincidental, and it relied on essence motivation, primarily through the use of interesting,well-illustrated books

Horst, Cobb and Meara (1998) proposed a carefully controlled book-length readingtreatment (34 low-intermediate learners in Oman read 21,232 words of the simplifiedMayor of Casterbridge text in a ten-day period) when replicating the well-known study

by Saragi, Nation and Meiter in 1978 The result showed that there was an average.Furthermore, Xu Hong selected about one in every five new words and subjects with

larger L2 vocabulary sizes had greater incidental word learning gains The study alsofound that L2 learners recognized the meaning of new words and built associationsbetween them as a result of comprehension-focused extensive reading However, theresults of Day et al (1991) demonstrated that exposure to previously unknown ordifficult words through sustained silent reading for entertainment by Japanese EFLstudents had a positive effect on their ability to recognize these words in a vocabularytest.

1.2.4. Difficulties in incidental vocabulary learning

In spite of the fact that extensive reading has an influence on incidental vocabularylearning, other researchers have found that reading for L2 vocabulary developmentmay lead to some problems First, there were wrong inferences that vocabulary waslearned cursorily which prevents learners from using words actively Some lexicalitems such as words with a deceptive morphological structure, idioms, words (Laufer,1997) often misguide the learners and make them misunderstand the words It short-circuits readers’ contextual guessing process

Second, to have an effective guessing, the context is well understood and almost all ofthe surrounding words in the text are known, which requires good textual clues andsubstantial prior vocabulary knowledge on the part of the learner Different from nativespeakers, L2 learners have some difficulties in guessing word meanings correctly, forthey always have more opportunities to encounter new words within various contextswith their lack of sufficient word knowledge Moreover, correct guessing of wordmeanings depends on accurate recognition of surrounding words and good use ofreading strategies (Huckin & Coady, 1999) However, learners always feel frustrated incomprehension when facing overwhelming texts in extensive reading, for their wordknowledge is insufficient and lack active use of different reading strategies So thereaders may decide to ignore the words, or cannot infer a word from context

Last, Huckin & Coady (1999) stated that the non-recurrence of new words cannotguarantee the acquisition of the vocabulary This can be accounted for by the fact thatunlike native speakers, L2 learners have very few opportunities to be exposed to theunknown words repeatedly, apart from the high-frequency words Accordingly, theycannot pick up the features of the words incrementally to form the solid lexicalknowledge in their mental lexicon

1.3.Previous research

Regarding the benefits of ER on improving learners’ vocabulary learning, a numbers ofstudies that range in scope from case studies of single readers to large-scaleapplications through a school were widely documented Within the scope of the thesis,the researcher would like to review the previous studies focusing on the way that thoseemphasized the benefits of graded readers to incidental vocabulary acquisition and theattitudes of learners towards reading and ER

1.3.1. Researches on incidental vocabulary acquisition

A famous research known as the Clockwork Orange Study by Saragi, Nation

& Meister, 1978 reported the effectiveness of incidental vocabulary acquisitionthrough reading 20 native speakers of English working in Indonesia participated

in the study Students were asked to read a novel, A Clockwork Orange (written byAnthony Burgess) within three days The novel contained a total of 241 different

Russian-based slang words called nadsat After reading the novel, they were given

a multiple-choice test which contained 90 nadsat words and showed a 76% gain on

average simply through incidental learning without referring to a dictionary The studystrongly supported the notion that extensive reading leads to “a substantial amount ofvocabulary learning” (p 78)

Waring and Takaki (2003) examined the rate at which vocabulary was learned from

reading the 400 headword graded reader A Little Princess To ascertain whether words

of different frequency of occurrence rates were more likely to be learned and retained

or forgotten, 25 words within five bands of differing frequency of occurrence (15 to 18times to those appearing only once) were selected The spelling of each word waschanged to ensure that each test item was unknown to the 15 intermediate level (or

above) female Japanese subjects (e.g.,beautiful into smorty, world into rimple) The full text of A Little Princess, with the substitute words, was printed for each subject and

was put into book form along with a test booklet The subjects were asked to "read thisstory as usual and enjoy it." Three tests (word-form recognition, prompted meaningrecognition and unprompted meaning recognition) were administered immediately afterreading, after one week and after a three month delay The results show that words can

be learned incidentally but that most of the words were not learned More frequentwords were more likely to be learned and were more resistant to decay The datasuggest that, on average, the meaning of only one of the 25 items will be rememberedafter three months, and the meaning of none of the items that were met fewer than eight

times will be remembered three months later The data thus suggest that very little new

vocabulary is retained from reading one graded reader, and that a massive amount ofgraded reading is needed to build new vocabulary It is suggested that the benefits ofreading a graded reader should not only be assessed by researching vocabulary gains

and retention, but by looking at how graded readers help develop and enrich already known vocabulary.

In 2006, Pigada and Schmitt used 70 nouns and 63 verbs in their study in investigatingincidental vocabulary acquisition with a participant, a learner of French, by using fourgraded readers in French Since the texts were short, the authors included only “themost common parts of speech found in natural text”, in the hope that further researchwould include other word classes They organized the two word classes into sixdifferent frequency groups according to the number of encounters and tested threetypes of word knowledge (meaning, spelling, and grammatical behavior) Themeasurement procedure was a one-on-one interview that allowed a very goodindication of whether learning occurred They found that substantial word learning

occurred during the ER, although the improvement was not uniform across the threetypes of word knowledge Spelling was enhanced in all noun frequency groups and inall but two verb groups For meaning, low-frequency nouns and verbs showed limitedlearning, and verbs were more limited than nouns Grammatical behavior knowledgewas improved in all frequency groups of nouns, while the percentage of grammaticalmastery of verbs was much lower than that of nouns Overall, the study indicates thatmore vocabulary acquisition is possible from extensive reading than previous studieshave suggested.

Kweon and Kim (2008) conducted an experimental research to investigate how andwhich unknown words can be incidentally learned and retained while Korean learners

of English read substantial amounts of authentic text over a long period of time 12Korean learners of English read authentic literary texts and were tested on theirknowledge of vocabulary before reading (pretest), immediately after reading (Posttest1), and 1 month after Posttest 1 (Posttest 2) The results showed a significant word gainbetween the pretest and Posttest 1 and that most gained words were retained at Posttest

2 Of the 3 different word classes that were used, nouns were a little easier to retainthan verbs and adjectives, the authors came to an important conclusion that words can

be learned incidentally but that most of the words were not learned More frequentwords were more likely to be learned and were more resistant to decay The datasuggest that, on average, the meaning of only one of the 25 items will be rememberedafter three months, and the meaning of none of the items that were met fewer than eight

times will be remembered three months later The data thus suggest that very little new

vocabulary is retained from reading one graded reader, and that a massive amount ofgraded reading is needed to build new vocabulary Finally, the authors suggested thatthe benefits of reading a graded reader should not only be assessed by researchingvocabulary gains and retention, but by looking at how graded readers help develop and

enrich already known vocabulary

Tiryaki and Tütüniş (2012) conducted a research on extensive reading and vocabulary

development, and they focused on vocabulary learning of reluctant elementary levelstudents The study investigated whether extensive reading would make anynoteworthy distinction in the vocabulary development of these students To thisrespect, a small-scale classroom research was carried out at a private university in thefall term of 2010-2011 academic year A hundred elementary level students werechosen and they were divided into experimental and control groups With experimentalgroup the materials for extensive reading were selected Those materials were fourgraded readers Control group was not exposed to any extensive reading during the fallterm whereas students of the experimental group were asked to read those gradedreaders until the end of the fall term However, both groups were responsible from thesyllabus which was designed by school administration and it involved studying threeunits of a main course book until the end of the fall term Then both groups took a pre-test at the beginning of the term to display that they were at elementary level and apost-test at the end of the term to present whether any improvements were observed intheir vocabulary or not Finally the results were analyzed and compared to find outwhether any difference occurred between two groups in terms of vocabularydevelopment The results of the data analysis showed that extensive reading improvedthe range of the words of the reluctant learners in the experimental group who wereasked to read graded readers However, when the results analyzed and compared it wasobserved that the control group who were not obliged to read, distinguishablyperformed worse in the vocabulary test both in the first part and in the second part

In another study by Eghtesadi and Momeni, situated in an EFL context, seventy fiveelementary learners of English were randomly selected with the authors’ aim atdiscovering the ways purposes behind reading activities influence vocabularyknowledge gain and retrieval The participants were assigned to three groups of ‘free

reading’, ‘reading comprehension’ and ‘reading to summarize’ The input text ‘A good night’s work’ was selected from a graded reader series Reading Comprehension 4 by

Louis Fidge The text was administered to all the three groups The data in bothimmediate and delayed post-test revealed that both vocabulary learning and retentionwere greatly influenced by the purposeful reading activity The Scheffe post-hoc testrevealed that the mean scores of the ‘summarizing’ and ‘reading comprehension’groups were significantly different from the mean score of the ‘free reading’ group Butthe results did not indicate any significant differences between the mean scores of thetwo groups of ‘summarizing’ and ‘reading comprehension’ However the strength ofassociation for the immediate post-test and the delayed one showed that a large part ofthe variance between the three groups could be explained by the reading purpose Thefindings of the present study generally provided positive support of the role of readers’purpose on incidental gain of vocabulary knowledge Furthermore, the low rate ofincidental vocabulary learning and retention in English as a foreign language contextextremely suggested the explicit teaching of new lexicon on the part of teachers alongwith encouraging the learners toward ER Finally, it should be noted that since theparticipants in the study were female elementary language learners, the results mayface problems of generalizability

1.3.2.Researches on attitudes towards ER

The effects of ER on learner’s motivation and attitude are impressive Study after studyshows how attitudes changed toward reading in English and how the students becameeager readers Numerous studies have found favorable attitudes toward ER classes andGRs Students with high motivation naturally like the experience of ER In regard toless-motivated students reporting positive attitudes, their positive feelings are primarilydue to the satisfaction they felt at their unexpected accomplishment But many of thesestudents stop reading books in English when the motivation provided by an instructor’shomework assignment is absent But this stoppage should not mean that they do notlike reading GRs The students’ reading success and the opportunity to practice English

generates the positive attitudes and intentions mentioned above This method alsointroduces students to a different way of developing their English proficiency.

Murphy (2010) conducted a study among first and second-year non-English majors at anational university in western Japan In the first class, students were timed as they read

a chapter of the graded reader The Good Earth, (Heinemann Intermediate level) In the

second to last class of the semester, they were timed again reading a different chapter

of the same book Both chapters were similar in setting and characters Students werealso asked about their reading habits In the last class of the semester, students wereinterviewed in small groups in English or Japanese, and interviewed about theirattitudes and opinions toward the class The findings in this study confirm that ERshould be one of the fundament of L2 curriculums Furthermore, communicativeactivities can easily be incorporated into an ER course, with graded readers providing atreasure chest of content and ideas for discussion Students also enjoy feelingsuccessful in the L2 The high levels of positive attitude toward this type of approachseems to suggest that a communicative approach with ER is an obvious path towardbetter student performance (versus intensive-only reading classes) and attitudes towardreading in the L2 and the language and culture in general

Pellicer-Sánchez and Schmitt (2010) conducted a research to explore the degree towhich relatively advanced L2 readers can acquire spelling, word class, and recognition

and recall of meaning from reading the unmodified authentic novel Things Fall Apart.

The participants were twenty Spanish in the last year of their undergraduate degreefrom a university in Spain Readers were simply asked to read the book for pleasurewithout paying special attention to any aspect of the book for around one month.Finally, a section on participants’ attitudes was included so as to havethe possibility of examining the relationship, if any, between readers’attitudes and vocabulary acquisition Nine questions were preparedconcerning participants’ opinions about their participation in this

study The questions were asked orally, with the participantsencouraged to answer freely The interviews revealed that allparticipants had read the complete book and that all had enjoyedtaking part in the study, although three said that participation hadbeen a little burdensome because of the book topic or the limitedamount of reading time available In addition, most participantsfound the level of the book appropriate for their level of English,verifying our original judgment Furthermore, the two participantswho found the level of the book a bit difficult for their level of Englishdid not show noticeably lower scores Seventeen out of the twentyparticipants liked the book overall and found it interesting Only oneparticipant found the presence of foreign words in the book to be aproblem for general understanding, and only three participants feltthat there were sometimes too many foreign words Finally, sixteen

of the participants had the feeling of having learnt something of thetarget words Four of these sixteen participants also had theimpression of having learnt something of the foreign culture, and twobelieved they had learnt something more about English Theencouraging figures and results of this study make us think thatparticipants’ positive attitudes and opinions had a helpful effect onvocabulary acquisition

Yamashita (2013) studied the effects of ER on reading attitudes in a foreign languagewith the participants of 61 second-year undergraduate students He used aquestionnaire to measure two aspects of reading, attitude-affect (feeling) and cognition(thinking)- based on a five-point scale During class, students were able to accessapproximately 500 GRs of different series and they read both in and outside of class.The results indicated that ER increased students’ feelings of comfort and reducedanxiety towards EFL reading, and had a positive effect on the intellectual value that the

students attached to reading However, it did not increase perceived despite the fact thatthe students knew that the amount of reading they did would be reflected in their classgrade Yamashita (2013) concluded that the study had gone a step further into theeffective domain and expanded the understanding of the impact of ER by documentingits positive effect on changes different aspects of EFL attitudes

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1.Participants

The subjects of the study were 25 students (girls only) of English 2013 class Theparticipants’ overall English proficiency was roughly at the level of pre-intermediatejudging from their results of the English test in the university entrance examination and

those of their Reading skill 1 final tests at the end the first semester In addition, I am also their English teacher in charge of Reading Skill 1 subject Another important factor

is that the students were willing to take part in the research Before this program, theyhad not involved in any English extensive reading activity They were selected in thesecond semester with the assumption that they could get used to the teaching andlearning environment at college after graduating from high school

2.2.Action research

Wallace (1998) defined an action research is done by systematically collecting data onteachers’ everyday practice and analyzing them to make some decision regarding futurepractice According to him, AR can be helpful because of the three following reasons:(1) It can have a specific and immediate outcome which can be directly relate topractice in the teacher’s own context, (2) the findings of such research might beprimarily specific (it means that it is not claimed that they are necessarily of generalapplication and therefore the method might be more free-ranging than those ofconventional research Nunan (1992) stated that AR is problem focus, mainlyconcerned with a single case in a specific situation and tries to find solutions to theproblem in focus An AR as defined by Kemmis and Mc Taggart (1998) is a teacher

initiated classroom research which seeks to increase the teachers’ understanding ofclassroom teaching and learning then brings about improvement in classroom practice.This action research model is a cycle and continuous process These stages are notseparate but embedded within action and reflection In addition, action research can becarried out within the everyday context of the classroom

2.2.1 Action research procedures

An AR program should be flexible as different researchers may have variety ofprocesses in different certain situations An AR study can have a number of steps ofphrases The researcher decided to use the model of an AR program as McBride andSchostak (1991) His process consists of the following steps:

FIGURE 1: Action research model of Bride and Schostak (1991)

In this study, an AR was conducted based on the above process The stages of this ARwere described in details:

1 Identifying the problem

The researcher’s experience, her discussion with learners and her observation helpedher find out that one of the students’ problems is lack of vocabulary Therefore, thisfeature was selected to be the focus in this study

2 Collecting and analyzing the data

To have more information, the researcher had to collect the data relating to students’vocabulary knowledge, their reading habits and their reading ability First of all, theresearcher found out that her students often complained about having difficulties in

reading in English Secondly, she investigated the course book of Reading Skill 1.

Thirdly, the researcher had small interviews with students in order to know about theirreading habits and opinions about reading outside the class All came to a hypothesisthat her students’ lack of vocabulary items may be the result of their poor extensivereading in English habits Another question was raised that if their vocabulary would

be improved when they read extensively

3 Planning and implementing the action

Based on the literature review relating to the topic, a procedure of an AR was carriedout to bring the improvements in the context of the researcher’s situation Theresearcher decided to use graded readers to help her students to improve theirvocabulary The procedure of the action was described as follows

Table 1: The Graded Readers Program

1 Introduce the graded readers program

Carry out pretest

2 Deliver the first story “Goodbye Mr Hollywood”

Deliver book report worksheet 1

3 Collect book report worksheet 1

Deliver “Mutiny on the Bounty”

Deliver book report worksheet 2

4 Collect book report worksheet 2

Deliver “The Elephant Man”

Deliver book report worksheet 3

5 Collect book report worksheet 3

Deliver “The Phantom of the Opera”

Deliver book report worksheet 4

6 Collect book report worksheet 4

Deliver “The Witches of the Pendle”

Deliver book report worksheet 5

7 Collect book report worksheet 5

Deliver “The Withered Arm”

Deliver book report worksheet 6

8 Collect book report worksheet

Carry out immediate-posttestHand out Questionnaire

10 Carry out delayed -posttest

Week 1: Introduction and pretest

In this activity, the teacher introduced the ER program, its aims and benefits to allparticipants and encouraged them to read the GRs extensively outside the classroom

By doing this, the researcher was able to monitor the participants' reading with thebelief of Vietnamese that learners had worked better under the time pressure Theresearcher integrated with investigating students' attitudes and past experience ofvocabulary learning Students were also suggested not to use dictionaries to look upunknown words What the researcher deeply sought for was students' personal

experience of what they had read, for example, how interesting they found thematerials especially the ways they dealt with new vocabulary encountering duringreading the selected books Also, the researcher was in search of comprehensiveunderstanding why and how ER worked well or not to help students enhance theirknowledge of vocabulary, especially whether ER could work to increase students'engagement and motivation in learning vocabulary In this section, the vocabulary testwas carried out

Week 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7: Students' reading and doing worksheet

Each week, the participants were handed over one 400-headword story and encouraged

to read the materials immediately Students' reading and writing worksheet were doneoutside the classroom To help students have fuller understanding of the stories, anumber of pre, while and post reading activities designed at the end of each book weresuggested for students to accomplish With every graded reader chosen, students wereasked to keep book reports in which students expressed their personal experiences ofwhat they had read i.e whether and why they found the materials enjoyable, whetherthe reading was easy or difficult for them and especially the ways they dealt with newvocabulary during reading through vocabulary learning strategies Through theseactivities, students had chance to review and recycle vocabulary from what they hadread which helped the teacher assess their progress in learning vocabulary

Weekly meeting sessions

The researcher arranged regular Saturday meetings for about one hour with allparticipants in the school library at which the students and teacher spent most of themeeting time discussing about students' reading and talking with some prominent/ lessinterested students about their progress in vocabulary acquisition, their opinions ormotivation towards ER, difficulties they encountered while reading for moreencouragement to read extensively

Week 8, 10: Questionnaire, immediate protest, and delayed protest