skkn EXAMINING THE PARTICIPATION OF THE 12TH FORM STUDENTS DURING READING ACTIVITIES AT LUONG THE VINH HIGH SCHOOL

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI Đơn vị: Trường THPT chuyên Lương Thế Vinh Mã số: SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM EXAMINING THE PARTICIPATION OF THE 12TH FORM STUDENTS DURING READING ACTIVITIES AT LUONG THE VINH HIGH SCHOOL Người thực hiện: HỒ THỊ THẢO TRINH Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu: Quản lý giáo dục ¨ Phương pháp dạy học môn tiếng Anh R Phương pháp giáo dục ¨ Lĩnh vực khác ¨ Có đính kèm: ¨ Mô hình ¨ Phần mềm ¨ Phim ảnh Năm học 2012 - 2013 ¨ Giáo án điện tử SƠ LƯỢC LÝ LỊCH KHOA HỌC I THÔNG TIN VỀ CÁ NHÂN Họ tên: HỒ THỊ THẢO TRINH Ngày tháng năm sinh: 28 tháng 11 năm 1973 Chức vụ: Đảng: Chính quyền: II Đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT chuyên Lương Thế Vinh TRÌNH ĐỘ ĐÀO TẠO Trình độ: Thạc sỹ Tốt nghiệp: Victoria University III KINH NGHIỆM KHOA HỌC Đã trực tiếp tham gia giảng dạy: 17 năm Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm năm gần đây: o Teaching grammar in light of communicative language teaching o Applying communicative activities in english reading class o Topic-based vocabulary teaching to students majoring in English SỞ GD&ĐT ĐỒNG NAI Trường THPT chuyên Lương Thế Vinh _ CỘNG HOÀ XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Độc lập – Tự – Hạnh phúc _ Biên Hoà, ngày 03 tháng 05 năm 2013 PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT ĐÁNH GIÁ SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM Năm học: 2012 – 2013 Tên chuyên đề: EXAMINING THE PARTICIPATION OF THE 12TH FORM STUDENTS DURING READING ACTIVITIES AT LUONG THE VINH HIGH SCHOOL Họ tên tác giả: HỒ THỊ THẢO TRINH Tổ: Ngoại ngữ Lĩnh vực: Quản lý giáo dục ¨ Phương pháp dạy học môn tiếng Anh ¨ Phương pháp giáo dục ¨ Lĩnh vực khác ¨ Tính - Có giải pháp hoàn toàn ¨ - Có giải pháp cải tiến, đổi từ phương pháp có ¨ Hiệu - Hoàn toàn triển khai áp dụng toàn ngành có hiệu cao ¨ - Có tính cải tiến đổi từ giải pháp có triển khai áp dụng toàn ngành có hiệu cao ¨ - Hoàn toàn triển khai áp dụng đơn vị có hiệu cao ¨ - Có tính cải tiến đổi từ giải pháp có triển khai áp dụng đơn vị có hiệu ¨ Khả áp dụng - Căn luận khoa học cho việc hoạch định đường lối sách: Tốt ¨ Khá ¨ Đạt ¨ - Đưa giải pháp khuyến nghị có khả ứng dụng thực tiễn dễ thực dễ vào sống: Tốt ¨ Khá ¨ Đạt ¨ - Đã áp dụng thực tế đạt hiệu có khả áp dụng đạt hiệu phạm vi rộng: Tốt ¨ Khá ¨ Đạt ¨ XÁC NHẬN CỦA TỔ CHUYÊN MÔN THỦ TRƯỞNG ĐƠN VỊ - INTRODUCTION 1.1 - Statements of the problems and rationale of the study Innovations in teaching and learning English have become an important issue in the world because English is considered as the language of globalization, international communication, commerce and trade, the media and pop culture (Richards, 2002) Since the introduction of the new English textbooks for Vietnamese high schools seven years ago, teachers have seemingly become more motivated to teach English as the new curriculum focuses on all the four skills of English and highlights task-based communicative approach As for 12th form students, mastering English is very important because they will have to take part in the National Examination for the General Certificate of Secondary Education, in which English is a compulsory subject English is also one of the subjects for the Entrance Examination of some national and international universities In teaching and learning English as a foreign language, reading has always received a great deal of attention Therefore, how to teach and learn reading effectively requires many efforts from both teachers and learners Carrell (1984, p.1) states, “reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills, particularly in English as a second or a foreign language” In fact, becoming an effective and fluent reader in another language has a number of important benefits for the learner First, reading in the target language may help students consolidate the learning that has taken place Second, it may help students to increase knowledge of the target language through exposure to new vocabulary and grammatical structures During months of teaching reading comprehension to class 12A1 ( non-English majored class ) of Luong The Vinh High School, the researcher found that her students confronted five major obstacles in reading such as: the habits of word-by-word reading; overemphasis on forms rather than meaning; excessive focus on details rather than main ideas; poor vocabulary and limited background knowledge As an English teacher who has been teaching English for 17 years, the researcher wishes to take a serious look at the teaching and learning of English in general and the teaching and learning of the reading skills in particular so as to suggest suitable techniques to enable the teaching and learning of reading comprehension at high schools to be more effective This matter of fact has inspired the researcher to conduct the research into the participation of the 12th form students during reading activities in the hope that through this study, the researcher will have better teaching plans in order to improve students’ reading skills 1.2- Research questions Based on the above rationale, the research aims to answer the following questions: What are the students’ attitudes towards the teaching and learning of reading? What difficulties the students meet when dealing with a reading lesson? What techniques are suggested to help the 12th-form students at Luong The Vinh High School improve their reading comprehension? - LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 - Definition of reading and reading comprehension Reading is an activity with a purpose A person may read in order to gain information or verify existing knowledge, or in order to critique a writer's ideas or writing style A person may also read for enjoyment, or to enhance knowledge of the language being read The purposes for reading guide the reader's selection of texts Ur (1996, p.38) defines "reading means reading and understanding" According to Harmer (1989, p.153), "reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain The eyes receive messages and the brain then has to work out the significance of these messages" Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension The text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is Readers’ knowledge, skills, and strategies include: ü Linguistic competence: the ability to recognize the elements of the writing system; knowledge of vocabulary; knowledge of how words are structured into sentences ü Discourse competence: knowledge of discourse markers and how they connect parts of the text to one another ü Sociolinguistic competence: knowledge about different types of texts and their usual structure and content ü Strategic competence: the ability to use top-down strategies as well as knowledge of the language (a bottom-up strategy) The purpose(s) for reading and the type of text determine the specific knowledge, skills, and strategies that readers need to apply to achieve comprehension Reading comprehension is thus much more than decoding Reading comprehension happens when the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropriate for the type of text, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose It is obvious that reading comprehension plays an important role in teaching and learning reading a foreign language It has the nature of communication, in which reading activity acts as a means of communication between the writer and the reader Swam (1975, p.1) proposes “a student is good at comprehension we mean that he can read accurately and efficiently so as to get the maximum information of a text with the minimum of understanding.” Grelet (1981, p.3) considers “reading comprehension or understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible.” Though these opinions are not exactly the same, what comes up as a common point is that reading comprehension is the process in which the readers, as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind these forms 2.2- Kinds of reading Nutall (2000, p.38) indicates two main types of reading: intensive and extensive reading For him, these are not just two contrasting ways of reading but an infinitive variety of interrelated and overlapping strategies Actually, both of these two types are complementary and necessary a Intensive Reading Nutall (2000, p.38) states that intensive reading involves approaching the text under the guidance of a teacher or a task which forces the student to focus on the text According to Brown (1990, p.297), intensive reading "is usually a classroom-oriented activity in which students focus on the linguistic or semantic details of a passage" The objective of intensive reading is to understand not only what the text means but also how the meaning is produced b Extensive Reading Extensive reading is generally associated with reading large quantities with the aim of getting an overall understanding of the material Lewis and Hill (1992, p.109) point out that "extensive reading means students have a general understanding of the text without necessarily understanding every word" This type of reading is suitable for students' self-learning in order to train them to read directly and fluently in the foreign language for their own enjoyment without the aid of the teacher However, extensive reading can be best achieved only through an instructional program Extensive reading sometimes involves skimming and scanning as strategies to gain general sense of a text, skimming for the gist and scanning for some key details In short, for second or foreign language learners, both intensive and extensive reading are of great importance as they act as a means to gain knowledge but also to develop learners' language skills 2.3- Reading in second language learning and teaching In a second language classroom, reading plays a significant role in building both linguistic and background knowledge for other language skills It is a fact that reading tasks in the classroom not always correspond to real-life purposes As pointed out by Nuttall (1996, p.223), plenty of reading tasks merely require students to answer task questions like gap-fill or multiple choice questions Consequently, they fail to reflect how the students comprehend similar texts in the real world In fact, there exist numerous reasons for our real-life reading As far as it is concerned, Nuttall distinguishes functional texts from descriptive, discursive texts and fiction Accordingly, texts like leaflets, notices and advertisements belong to the former due to their practical purposes which are evident and typical of their genres On the contrary, when reading descriptive and discursive texts and fiction, the readers may have various aims, most typically to make decisions or express the extent of agreement with the author’s arguments As argued by Nuttall (1996, p.16), there are two main ways for a reader to process a text Specifically, students may take the bottom-up approach, in which “the reader builds up a meaning by […] recognizing letters and words, working out sentence structures” Otherwise, their “intelligence and experience” may serve as a means of comprehending the text if they take “the top-down approach” Whereas the bottom-up approach suffered from severe criticism in the past, recent studies have suggested that interactive reading, which combines both approaches to processing a reading text, may account for efficient reading (Stanovich, 1980, cited in Nunan, 1989, p.33) So far, there have been various approaches to teaching reading, such as the traditional approach, process-based approach and task-based approach In all these approaches, apart from the evident roles of learners in the process of reading comprehension, the roles of teachers in an EFL reading lesson are also significant and worth mentioning On the one hand, Nuttall (2000, p.3233) specifies some of these roles as choosing reading texts, designing tasks, facilitating reading process and monitoring progress He thus comes to a conclusion that there is always a great deal for the teacher to in a reading lesson On the other hand, he also reminds teacher of several pitfalls in teaching reading, in which “testing instead of teaching” and teacher’s overly dominance in processing the reading texts are among the most common mistakes Nuttall (2000, p.33) mentions several main roles for the students in a reading lesson They are as follows: - Taking an active part in learning: This is the first and foremost responsibility of the learner They have to be active and take charge of what they - Monitoring comprehension: Students need to understand how texts work and what they when they read - Learning text talk: It is clear that a good reader carries on a dialogue with the text Consequently, the students have to learn how to this An effective way to promote this skill is to talk about texts in class - Taking risks: Students have to take the risk of making mistakes because a mistake is an opportunity to learn - Learning not to cheat oneself: Learning to read is learning to give students enormous advantages in life It may lead to better jobs, to personal development, interest and enjoyment Students who not want to learn to read can easily cheat but they are only cheating themselves - METHODOLOGY 3.1 - Participants The process of data collection involved the participation of 45 students of class 12A1 3.2 - Material Reading lessons in Tiếng Anh 12 textbooks consist of three stages “Before you read” “While you read” and “After you read” to facilitate students’ reading comprehension This three-stage model is to minimize time consumption and maximize reading effectiveness 3.3 - Data collection instrument For forty-five students, using questionnaires seems to be an appropriate choice Brown (2001, p 6) states that questionnaires are effective for obtaining the views of all the participants With a view to examining students’ attitudes towards class reading activities, The questionnaire was designed to get information concerning: Students’ reasons for learning English Students’ attitudes towards the role of reading Students’ attitudes towards class reading activities Students’ difficulties when learning reading at school Students’ expectations towards their teachers 10 Students’ effort for improving their reading comprehension - DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 4.1 - Data analysis 4.1.1 - Students’ reasons for learning English The data obtained from the students’ questionnaire will be discussed to find out the students’ purposes of learning English RESULTS OPTIONS N % Communicating effectively in English 20 44.4 Passing the school graduation exam 45 100 Completing a compulsory subject at school 13 28.9 Preparing for the future jobs 25 55.6 Studying abroad 8.9 Others 1 Table 1: Students’ reasons for learning English (N = 45) As shown in the above table, the main purpose of learning English of all of the 12A1students is to pass the school graduation exam (100%) In the meanwhile, 44.4% of the students learn English with the aim of communicating, 28.9% for completing a compulsory subject, 8.9 % for studying abroad and only 2.2 % (1 student) answered that he just loved English It is interesting to discover that 55.6 % of the students showed their main reason for studying English was to meet the future job requirements They seem to know that with the rapid development and expansion of information technologies, there should be a common language for people of 11 all countries to exchange information and it is English that is used as means of international communication 4.1.2 - Students’ attitudes towards the role of reading a Students’ attention paid to the aspects of language taught at school The survey results indicate that 100 % of the students spend most of their time on learning Grammar and vocabulary whereas 40% on reading, 35.6 % on speaking, 22.2 % on writing and only 17.7 % on listening It is not surprising to discover that students spend more time on grammar and vocabulary than other skills because their main purpose of learning English is to pass the graduation examination b Students’ attitude towards the importance of learning reading comprehension at school Fascinatingly, most of the students have positive attitudes towards reading 88.9 % of them find the importance of reading and important (22.2% chose “very important” and 66.7% “important”) However, a certain number of students (11.6 %) not highly appreciate the important role of reading It seems that reading is not very beneficial to them c Students’ attitude toward the benefit of reading In the survey, 31 students (68.9%) admit that reading can help them enrich their vocabulary Besides, reading can help 24 students (53.3%) broaden their knowledge of the world and 19 students (42.2%) improve their grammar 18 students (40%) can improve other language skills through reading This could reflect the fact that all the four skills ought to be combined in a reading lesson In other words, integrating these skills in teaching a language is very important for teachers 4.1.3 - Students’ attitudes towards class reading activities a Students’ attitude towards pre- reading activities 12 66.7% realize that pre-teaching new vocabulary in the reading text is the most popular technique or activity that teachers often use to help students to get involved in the reading tasks easily 53.3% agree that giving some prereading questions to think before reading is necessary An explanation can be made here is that the technique might save teachers time and energy from designing pre-reading activities It can be seen from the result that the majority of the students like using games to introduce the topic and brainstorming words or idea related to the topic (60% and 55.6%, respectively) Some of them prefer using visual aid to introduce the topic However, most of them show that the teacher should spend more time designing more pre-reading exercises for them b Students’ attitude towards while-reading activities i Students’ activities when looking for specific information A large number of students (53.3%) read the questions first and then answer them by scanning the text It is pleasing to see that these students seem to have appropriate reading skills when finding out specific information However, there are still numerous students who apply inappropriate reading skills They often read the text carefully before reading the questions and answer them or read the questions first and answer them after understanding everything in the text (40% and 6.7%, respectively) Applying inappropriate reading skills make students spend much time on unnecessary information they not need to look for ii Students’ activities when looking for the main idea of the text Being asked what they often when looking for the main idea of the text, most of the students (71.1%) say they read the text carefully and then choose the best answer after understanding every word Only 28.9% propose they skim the text to find the best answer iii Students’ activities when meeting new words 13 When unfamiliar words or structures appear, most students rely on dictionaries or their friends for the meanings or explanations (57.8% and 62.2% respectively) Surprisingly, only 17.8% say they try to figure out the meaning of the words from the context Up to 26.7% admit that asking the word meaning from the teachers is the easiest and most effective way c Students’ attitude toward post-reading activities The data collected states clearly that students not have the habit of writing on the topics relevant to the reading text and discussing on the topics in groups (just students have this option) These techniques seem to be difficult for these students to apply Summarizing the text after reading is very beneficial to students to gain better understanding and memorizing of the text, but only students often apply this Doing multiple-choice exercises after reading is also an easy and effective way to check students’ understanding about the texts 35.6% admit that they are often allowed to this It is surprising to see that 26 out of 45 students involving this study propose that they often nothing in post-reading The reason they mention is the time for a reading lesson They usually lack time in reading The post-reading activities play an important part in improving students’ language skills Students can consolidate or reflect upon what has been read and relate it to their own knowledge In short post-reading work contributes enormously to develop writing, speaking and listening skills 4.1.4 - Students’ difficulties when learning reading The most difficult problem is the limited capacity of vocabulary and grammatical structures 39 students in the survey (86.7%) assume that if they experience lots of new or difficult vocabulary and grammatical structures from the text, their motivation for reading will surely be decreased The next one (71.1%) is the lack of appropriate reading strategies It is obvious that students cannot reading tasks easily if they not have appropriate reading strategies Therefore, it is very important for teachers to suggest their 14 students essential reading strategies needed for each kind of reading tasks 21 out of 45 students (46.7%) blame on the lack of background knowledge to the topic of the reading text Whereas 24.4% of the students admit that their motivation for reading is still poor Only students (13.3%) think that they not have enough time for their reading 4.1.5 - The expectations of the students towards teachers’ reading techniques It is assumed that students involving in this study have certain difficulties in learning reading, and thus when they are asked, “What you expect from your teachers to help you overcome difficulties in learning reading?” Their responses as follows: RESULTS OPTIONS N % 28 62.2 21 46.7 4.4 Providing you with certain key words 24 53.3 Explaining clearly about the reading contexts 8.9 Suggesting you essential reading strategies needed for 32 71.1 29 64.4 Encouraging you to activate your previous knowledge into reading texts Creating comfortable environment for you to exchange information before reading Offering you as many chances to read the passage as you expect each kind of reading tasks Exploiting different kinds of reading materials suitable to your reading ability and your interest 15 Table 2: The expectations of students towards teachers’ reading techniques ( N=45) As can be seen from the table, the students wish to get a great deal of support from their teachers to overcome difficulties in learning reading The majority, 71.1% of all students expect to get essential reading strategies, which reveal that the grade 10 students lack sufficient reading strategies They need to be provided with more reading strategies to become effective readers 64.4% of the students in the survey wish to have more different kinds of reading materials suitable to their abilities and interests It is true that students want to read what they like and what are relevant to them 60 students involving in this study (62.2%) would like their teachers to encourage them to activate their previous knowledge into reading texts 53.3% desire to acquire new key words needed for the reading text so that they can deal with reading tasks easily It is not surprising to see that only 8.9% want their teachers to explain clearly about the reading contexts and 4.4% like to read the text as many times as they expect It is hoped that teachers are supposed to be instructors that need to be flexible in teaching techniques so that they can help students overcome difficulties in language learning, specifically in learning reading 4.1.6 - Students’ effort for improving their reading comprehension In order to improving the reading comprehension, all the students need a lot of efforts They often try their best in learning English Surprisingly, over half of the students think that they should learn all the new words by heart for improving their reading comprehension Having extensive reading outside classroom ranks the second with 26.7% of the students think they had better this 24.4% think they should share experience with their friends to find out the best way of learning reading Only 15.6% choose searching for reading materials on the Internet Besides their effort, they can’t deny the role of the teachers who often help them much in learning 4.2 - Findings 16 The major issues addressed in the paper are summarized by briefly answering the research questions as follows: 4.2.1 - Research question 1: What are the students’ attitudes towards the teaching and learning of reading? Although most of the 12A1 students are aware of the importance of reading, it is still ranked the second behind grammar and vocabulary This is because it is easier to get marks from the questions related to grammar and vocabulary In exam papers, there seem to be more questions about grammar and vocabulary Students express their positive attitudes to English learning They appreciate the importance of learning the language, especially, learning reading However, not all of them are satisfied with the topics, the lessons as well as the techniques provided by their teachers 4.2.2 Research question 2: What difficulties the students meet when dealing with a reading lesson? From the data analysis, it is obvious that students’ main difficulties which influence their motivation for reading as well as their understanding are their limitation of vocabulary and grammatical structures, their lack of appropriate reading strategies and their background knowledge Both the students and the teachers meet some problems for reading lessons Students’ lack of background knowledge and world knowledge are considered the biggest problems in a reading lesson Reading comprehension can be affected by background knowledge and world knowledge, with many demonstrations that those who possess rich prior knowledge about the topic of a reading often understand the reading better than the others with low prior knowledge Students’ lack of appropriate reading strategies and vocabulary structures are the other problems which the teachers have to face 4.2.3 Research question 3: What techniques are suggested to help the 12th-form students improve their reading comprehension? 17 What have been discussed and analyzed show that the number of the students being effective readers is modest while the rest of the students seem to be ineffective ones Thus, it is time the teachers did something to help their students as well as themselves overcome the difficulties and get more effective reading lessons Hopefully, the techniques suggested below can serve as a tool to make reading lessons more interesting 4.3 - Suggested techniques 4.3.1 - Techniques for reading interest and motivation It is necessary to increase the students’ interest and motivation for reading at the first stage because without the strong motivation of the students, the reading lesson will be boring and tough Teachers should use pre-reading techniques appropriately and flexibly Moreover, teachers should take the students’ preferences for pre-reading techniques into consideration Here are some suggested pre-reading techniques which hopefully can help to increase students’ interest and motivation a Using visual aids Visual aids are used to increase the effectiveness of classroom teaching-learning process (Joshi, 1995) As a result, using visual aids is considered to be one of the most efficient techniques used in language teaching since it is a way to show the meaning of the words visually through real objects, drawing, pictures, gestures and facial expressions b Using a brainstorming web This technique is attached to group work activity Each group must take a brainstorming web and write the title of the article in the center Then a group leader must be appointed so as to complete the following duties: make sure everyone speaks English only; make sure everyone in the groups contributes; be the writer for the group in filling the brainstorming web below: 18 In the circles, groups write everything they already know about the topic and everything they think might be in the passage They can add as many circles as needed Actually, a brainstorming web reminds the students of what they have already known and gets their minds ready to take new information as well In other words, a brainstorming web can activate the students’ schemata as well as stimulate their interests and curiosity c Giving pre-reading questions Pre-reading questions or guiding questions are comprehension questions asked either orally or written on the board before the students read the text It is evident that these questions are necessary to students because “they give the students a reason to read and to lead them to the main points of the text” (Doff, 1988, p.61) Guiding questions, obviously, should be concerned with the general meaning or with the most important point of a text and not focus on minor details More importantly, pre-reading questions should be fairly easy to answer and not too long 4.3.2 - Techniques for enriching vocabulary Nowadays, it is widely accepted that vocabulary plays an important part in language teaching and should be at the centre of language teaching More and more researchers have realized the importance of vocabulary acquisition in second language teaching According to McCarthy (1990), without words a learner cannot communicate or read David Wilkins (cited in Thornbury, 2002), when mentioning the shift of focus from grammar as the central anchor of language teaching to the lexicon, emphasizes the importance of 19 vocabulary acquisition as follows, “ without grammar very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” The 12th-form students often find reading tasks are difficult and boring because of their limitation of vocabulary Some suggested techniques below can be employed to solve this problem a Encouraging students to have extensive reading habit Familiarizing the students with extensive reading is a way to fuel their enthusiasm for learning English By reading extensive materials, the students can feel the joys of reading in other language Moreover, it can help students enrich their vocabulary, strengthen their understanding of language and consolidate their grammar In order to motivate the students to have extensive reading habit, here below are some principles to keep in mind - The reading material is easy enough - There is a variety of reading materials on a wide range of topics - Students can choose what they want to read b Using word games Word games should be used more frequently in class especially during consolidation stage Once they understand what they should and see the tasks are not as difficult as they think, they will enthusiastically get engaged in the activities In addition, if students are made to take part in word games voluntarily, they will become more active and hard working; thus, their vocabulary acquisition will be improved Moreover, through such activities, the interaction among students in the classroom can be promoted Students are brought closer to each other That makes a better studying environment, a very important factor that helps a lot in bringing good learning results c Using word list Using word list is also the effective way to revise vocabulary In order to help students become familiar with the new way of vocabulary learning, 20 which encourage their autonomy, teachers should guide them how to make their word lists Students are asked to write their own record sheets, on which they have to list each word they have selected along with its pronunciation, part of speech, meaning, collocations and related forms By letting students choose their own words in each unit, they were given a big opportunity to perform significant amount of autonomy to establish individual learning goals and work towards them in a structured way They not only chose their own words but also decided which learning strategies are going to work most effectively for them 4.3.3 - Techniques for improving students’ background knowledge Ask students to read, collect and synthesize information from various sources for presentations, projects, group discussions etc Asking students to collect the information from various sources and then select, summarize and synthesize it for a presentation, a group project or a discussion is actually a variant of the previous task It is a variation because students still have the chance to practise reading in the real world with certain freedom to choose the topic and the information that they are particularly interested in However, since the outcome of their reading will be assessed via their performance in the presentation, project or group discussion, more intensive reading becomes necessary in this reading task Therefore, this task could be said to well resemble the in-depth reading activities in students’ real life, such as when they wish to learn from various Internet sources about available scholarships or self-study a complicated subject matter by reading different materials in English The authenticity of this task, however, is rather simulated since assessment is imposed on the outcome of their reading As for classes with lower English competence, a simpler reading task was suggested by one interviewee as an alternative In stead of an oral presentation which might be time consuming and over-challenging, the students were asked to search for information and read as much as possible 21 about a specific topic of their favourites Then during a class contact, the teacher would start by sharing with the whole class some information that she had collected before asking her students for further supplementation Alternatively, teachers should subdivide a theme into several subtopics and assign each of them to different groups in the class Subsequently, each group of students should read at home to discuss or exchange the information with other groups in the following lesson - CONCLUSION 5.1 - Summary of the study Reading is one of the receptive skills through which students can widen their knowledge of the target language more effectively than the others So it is important for the students to have good techniques in reading to become good readers In the case of this study, the researcher is aware of many factors that affect students’ reading comprehension Among these, there are four main factors that should be taken into account for the 12th-form students: Students’ lack of background knowledge and world knowledge, students’ low motivation, students’ limited vocabulary and grammatical structures and their lack of appropriate reading strategies This study gives an analysis of the difficulties in reading and the sources of these difficulties as perceived by the 12th form students specifically, difficulties in vocabulary, reading strategies, and background knowledge and knowledge of the world The findings of the study indicate that the majority of students prefer having supplementary reading texts They want their teachers to provide them with reading strategies to help them read efficiently Besides, it reveals that the teachers not make full use of games and visual aids to catch the interest of most the students 22 As an English teacher of Luong The Vinh High School, the researcher has made a great effort to present some useful reading techniques which hopefully can be employed to help the 12th form students improve their reading comprehension 5.2 - Limitations and recommendations for further study Firstly, the researcher only uses survey questionnaires to collect data on views of the 12th-form students about reading difficulties and their needs in teaching and learning reading The number of the students taking part in the questionnaires is only from one classe (45 students), which may not be sufficient for the researcher to have precise judgments Secondly, not all the suggested techniques for teaching and learning reading are experimented properly, so the researcher can’t draw a conclusion of the effectiveness Therefore, the suggestions to improve reading comprehension for 12th-form students at Luong The Vinh High School may be subjective and uncompleted Finally, this study was carried out in Luong The Vinh High School, so the mentioned teaching methods may not be suitable to apply to other high schools because of learners’ differences in language proficiency and other social constraints Though this is just a small-scale study on the issue, it really provides some helpful suggestions for the teaching reading to the 12th-form students However, any further researches that employ supplementary instruments such as experimental research or observations and carry out in a longer period of time on a lager scale can help to prove the above results more strongly and persuasively and can also help to avoid the subjective assessments from the researcher of this study 23 REFERENCES Brown, H.D (1990) Principles of Teaching and Learning Prentice Hall Regents, New Jersey Carrell, P (1984) The effects of rhetorical organization on ESL readers TESOL Quarterly, 18(3), 441- 469 Doff, A (1988) Teach English: A training course for teachers Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Grelet, F (1981) Developing reading skills Cambridge: CUP Harmer, J (1989) The Practice of English Language Teaching 1st ed Longman Joshi, B (1995) The role of visual communication in teaching English The Progress of Education, 9, 266-268 Lewis, M and Hill, J (1992) Practical Techniques for Language Teaching Cambridge: Cambridge University Press McCarthy, M (1990) Vocabulary Oxford: Oxford University Press Nunan, D (1989) Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 10 Nuttall, C (1996) Teaching Reading Skills in a foreign language Oxford: Heinemann 11 Nuttall, C (2000) Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language 2nd Oxford: Heinemann 12 Richards, J (2002) Thirty Years of TEFL/TESL: A personal reflection RELC Journal Vol 33 No Pp 1-35 13 Swan, M (1975) Inside meaning Cambridge: CUP 14 Thornbury, S (2002) How to teach vocabulary Essex: Longman 15 Ur, P (1996) A Course in Language Teaching Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 16 Wilkins, David A (1972) Linguistics and Language Teaching London: Edward Arnold 24 [...]... obvious that students cannot do reading tasks easily if they do not have appropriate reading strategies Therefore, it is very important for teachers to suggest their 14 students essential reading strategies needed for each kind of reading tasks 21 out of 45 students (46.7%) blame on the lack of background knowledge to the topic of the reading text Whereas 24.4% of the students admit that their motivation... number of students (11.6 %) do not highly appreciate the important role of reading It seems that reading is not very beneficial to them c Students attitude toward the benefit of reading In the survey, 31 students (68.9%) admit that reading can help them enrich their vocabulary Besides, reading can help 24 students (53.3%) broaden their knowledge of the world and 19 students (42.2%) improve their grammar... sources of these difficulties as perceived by the 12th form students specifically, difficulties in vocabulary, reading strategies, and background knowledge and knowledge of the world The findings of the study indicate that the majority of students prefer having supplementary reading texts They want their teachers to provide them with reading strategies to help them read efficiently Besides, it reveals that... out the meaning of the words from the context Up to 26.7% admit that asking the word meaning from the teachers is the easiest and most effective way c Students attitude toward post -reading activities The data collected states clearly that students do not have the habit of writing on the topics relevant to the reading text and discussing on the topics in groups (just 3 students have this option) These... other skills because their main purpose of learning English is to pass the graduation examination b Students attitude towards the importance of learning reading comprehension at school Fascinatingly, most of the students have positive attitudes towards reading 88.9 % of them find the importance of reading and important (22.2% chose “very important” and 66.7% “important”) However, a certain number of. .. that affect students reading comprehension Among these, there are four main factors that should be taken into account for the 12th- form students: Students lack of background knowledge and world knowledge, students low motivation, students limited vocabulary and grammatical structures and their lack of appropriate reading strategies This study gives an analysis of the difficulties in reading and the. .. specific information A large number of students (53.3%) read the questions first and then answer them by scanning the text It is pleasing to see that these students seem to have appropriate reading skills when finding out specific information However, there are still numerous students who apply inappropriate reading skills They often read the text carefully before reading the questions and answer them or... reveals that the teachers do not make full use of games and visual aids to catch the interest of most the students 22 As an English teacher of Luong The Vinh High School, the researcher has made a great effort to present some useful reading techniques which hopefully can be employed to help the 12th form students improve their reading comprehension 5.2 - Limitations and recommendations for further study... learning reading are experimented properly, so the researcher can’t draw a conclusion of the effectiveness Therefore, the suggestions to improve reading comprehension for 12th- form students at Luong The Vinh High School may be subjective and uncompleted Finally, this study was carried out in Luong The Vinh High School, so the mentioned teaching methods may not be suitable to apply to other high schools... 71.1% of all students expect to get essential reading strategies, which reveal that the grade 10 students lack sufficient reading strategies They need to be provided with more reading strategies to become effective readers 64.4% of the students in the survey wish to have more different kinds of reading materials suitable to their abilities and interests It is true that students want to read what they