Some recommedations to develop reading skills for the first year students at faculty of english, hanoi open university

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY CODE: 28 FACULTY OF ENGLISH GRADUATION PAPER B.A Degree in English SOME RECOMMENDATIONS TO DEVELOP READING SKILLS FOR THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH, HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY Supervisor : Nguyen Thanh Binh, M.A Student : Pham Hoang Dung Date of birth : 02/09/1994 Course K19A3 (2012 – 2016) : Hanoi - 2016 DECLARATION Title: SOME RECOMMENDATIONS TO DEVELOP READING SKILLS FOR THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS AT THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH, HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY (Graduation Paper submitted in Partial Fulfillment for B.A Degree in English) I certify that no part of the above report has been copied and reproduced by me from any other person’s work without acknowledgement and that the report is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor Date submitted: April 15th, 2016 Student Phạm Hoàng Dũng Supervisor Nguyễn Thanh Bình ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am so glad to have a good opportunity of doing this graduation paper It helps me much in collecting and classifying my knowledge which I have studied To finish the paper, I have worked under extremely high responsibility I received many supports from teachers and friends I cannot accomplish this task without their help First of all, I would like to express my profound gratitude to all the teachers of Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University for teaching me to be a well-educated student I have leant so many things from what they taught me They have made the best condition for me to study at school during my last four years here Secondly, I am very grateful to my supervisor Mrs Nguyen Thanh Binh M.A for both her enormous positive response to my ideas for this paper, her honest advice and strict guidance that helped me complete this paper I would not complete my graduation paper without her enthusiastic instructions and correction In particular, I would like to give my special thanks to my friends and all other students who helped me a lot during my studies and my research as well Finally yet important, I am very thankful to my family who have encouraged and supported me so much in all respects Hanoi, April 15th,2016 Phạm Hoàng Dũng TABLE OF CONTENTS PART A: INTRODUCTION PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Understanding of reading 1.1.1 Definitions of reading 1.1.2 Types and skills of reading comprehension 1.1.2.3 Skimming and scanning together 1.1.2.6 Intensive and extensive reading together 10 1.1.3 The role of reading 11 1.2 Factors affecting reading 13 1.2.1 Language factors 13 1.2.2 Non - language factors 16 1.3 Summary of the chapter 18 CHAPTER II: SOME DIFFICULTIES AND LIMITATIONS OF THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH DURING THE PROCESS OF LEARNING READING SKILLS 19 2.1 Subject of the study 19 2.2 Data collection 19 2.2.1 Survey questionnaire 19 2.2.2 Class observation and discussion 20 2.3 Data analysis 20 2.3.1 Students' interest in reading 21 2.3.2 Real problems in reading 22 2.3.3 Methods used by students to develop their reading skills 25 2.4 Findings 31 2.5 Summary of the chapter 32 CHAPTER III: SOME RECOMMENDATIONS TO DEVELOP READING SKILLS FOR THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH, H.O.U 33 3.1 Strategies for learning reading 33 3.1.1 Pre-reading activities 33 3.1.2 While-reading activities 35 3.1.3 Post-reading activities 37 3.2 Some other recommendations to develop reading skills 39 3.2.1 Enhancing background knowledge 39 3.2.2 Improving reading speed 41 3.2.3 Changing reading habits 42 3.3 Creating motivation for reading 45 3.4 Summary of the chapter 47 PART C: CONCLUSION 48 REFERENCES APPENDIX Graduation paper PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale Reading is one of four basic language skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing which is learned and practiced regularly during the process of learning a foreign language and is a receptive skill that base on reading, people can get information, knowledge, then analyzing and doing things what they need to According to getting information or knowledge, reading also is a tool that help people entertain after hard-working hours by reading books, comics, magazines or so on Beside collecting information and knowledge, reading also plays a very important role in improving English user’s pronunciation along with speaking, especially reading out loud Meanwhile, students of English in general and first-year students at Faculty of English in particular are still bad at this skill The problem that they often get is about lack of vocabulary, grammar and limited social background, so they face with some difficulties in understanding the article if they not know the meaning of the words Therefore, improving reading skill is very important for students at English faculty of Hanoi Open University Moreover, students learning English as a major at university are usually not interested in reading, they regard it as a boring skill, not interesting as speaking or listening skills As a result, their reading skills are not paid much attention One more factor of the necessity of improving reading skill is nowadays reading well is also a request for a good job along with other English skills Hence useful advice for boosting students’ reading level really is a necessary demand During years at the Faculty of English, the author of this paper and other students have met many difficulties in advancing reading abilities Moreover, enhancing reading skills for undergraduate students of Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 English major at Graduation paper Hanoi Open University is one of the top targets of English training program following Standard of English Ability of Ministry of Education and Training Therefore, with the purpose of helping the first-year students to develop reading skills, the author of this paper would like to suggest some strategies to help them deal with regular problems they face in the process of learning reading skills Aims of the study The purpose of this study is to help develop the reading skills for the first-year students at English faculty – Hanoi Open University Therefore, the main targets of this thesis are: - Exploring the learning of reading skills of the first-year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University - Finding the problems and difficulties that the students usually get in reading process - Proposing some suggestions to improve reading skill for the firstyear students Scope of the study Due to the time limit and the length of this paper so I only focus on reading skills, some common problems and some strategies to develop reading skills It is the reason why I have chosen the topic “ Some recommendations to develop reading skills for the first-year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University” as the subject of my graduation paper Research questions - Are the first-year students interested in reading skills? - What are the problems and limitations which first-year students are facing with? Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 Graduation paper - What have the first-year students done to deal with all the difficulties and improve their reading skill? Methods of the study - Consulting supervisor and other teachers - Collecting data from : + Studying books related + Doing survey questionnaire + Getting from internet + Experienced teachers' points of view and comments + Class observation - Analyzing data collected - Drawing conclusion Design of the study The graduation paper is divided to three parts and three chapters • PART A : Introduction This part includes rationale, aims, scope, research questions, methods and design of the study • PART B: Development This part contains three main parts: Chapter I : Literature Review Chapter II : Some difficulties and limitations of the first- year students of English during the process of learning reading skills Chapter III : Some recommendations to develop reading skills for the first-year students at Faculty of English, H.O.U • PART C: Conclusionn This final part is to summarize or restate main points of the graduation paper Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 Graduation paper PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW Reading plays a very important role in daily life in general and in searching and receiving information and knowledge in particular, especially with English learners In learning English, reading is one of the four main skills that almost people who study English have to use competently Reading is used not only inside the class but also does outside in order to find out, collect and receive information and lore However, how many people understand exactly what is reading? The part below will provide different definitions of reading 1.1 Understanding of reading 1.1.1 Definitions of reading Establishing a clear definition of reading provides an important perspective for evaluating approaches to teaching word-identification skills Most educators would agree that the major purpose of reading should be the construction of meaning - comprehending and actively responding to what is read Two of the most widely cited and agreed-upon definitions of reading are the following: According to Anderson (1985), "Reading is the process of constructing meaning from written texts It is a complex skill requiring the coordination of a number of interrelated sources of information" (p.6) Similarly, Wixson, Peters, Weber, & Roeber (1987, citing the new definition of reading for Michigan) also assumed that: "Reading is the process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interaction among: the reader's existing knowledge; the information suggested by the text being read and the context of the reading situation" Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 Graduation paper Previously, mechanistic definitions of reading as the translation of printed symbols into oral language equivalents are incomplete, given the progress made in understanding the nature of the reading process There is widespread agreement that without the activation of relevant prior knowledge by a cognitively active reader and the melding of that prior knowledge with the text information, there can be no reading of text Even definitions of reading that emphasize meaning indicate that reading is activated by print The reader must be able to translate the written words into meaningful language Virtually, all four- and five-year-old children can communicate with and learn from oral language, but very few can read, because they lack the ability to identify printed words While simply being able to recognize or "say" the printed words of text without constructing the meaning of that text is not reading, constructing meaning from written text is impossible without being able to identify the words The terms word identification, word recognition, and decoding are frequently used interchangeably The new Literacy Dictionary (Harris & Hodges, 1995) defines both word recognition and word identification as "the process of determining the pronunciation and some degree of meaning of an unknown word" (pp 282-283) For words that are in a reader's meaning vocabulary, unlocking the pronunciation leads to the word's meaning If a printed word is not in a reader's meaning vocabulary, word-identification skills may allow access to the word's pronunciation, but not its meaning Being able to arrive at the pronunciation of a printed word constitutes word identification in the most minimal sense; however, if the reader is unable to attach meaning to the word, then he or she has not read the word, since reading must end in meaning construction Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 Graduation paper letters Building vocabulary while you build background knowledge (for all) Showing pictures of artifacts labeled with their appropriate names or making it more personal and memorable by asking the students to guess what each item is and what it may have been used for before you assign a term to it 3.2.2 Improving reading speed Reading speed is an important key which students have to pay much attention if they would like to develop their reading ability because they could complete reading task faster and better if their reading speed is at high level Being focused and selective in students' reading habits will reduce the time they spend reading If, in addition to using a range of reading skills, students want to increase their reading speed, then the following technique will be of use the average reading speed is about 240-300 words per minute For the average reader, the eye fixes on each word individually It is easy for their eye to recognise or words in a single fixation without a loss of understanding The key to increasing their reading speed is not to increase the speed at which their eyes move across the page, but to increase the word span for a single fixation A simple way of developing the habit of taking in more than one word per fixation is to take a page of text and divide it length ways into three with two lines drawn down the page Using a pen or pencil as a pointer, read each line of text by allowing students' eye to fall only in the middle of each of the three sections, as indicated by their pointer To develop reading speed students should not worry about how quickly they are reading but instead, concentrate on reading the line in only the fixation To become more natural, students should also practise without drawing lines and reduce the number of fixations to two per line Then once this increased word span becomes a comfortable habit, an increase in students' reading speed will occur Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 41 Graduation paper 3.2.3 Changing reading habits Developing reading skills and another language skills as well all need to carry out thoroughly and comprehensively Therefore, if students want to improve their reading ability, they have to change their reading habits because the study has reflected a fact that for the students, reading is just a temporary activity but not a regular habit Thus, the writer would like to recommend some changes believed that students should follow Reading instead of watching Books are little pieces of magic that run through generations They are one of the first forms of media, praised by many, read by fewer A source of knowledge and a place to dream, they combine what seems to be divided by a great gap By reading them, we are transported into another world of infinite possibilities Why are they regarded with such skepticism nowadays and read by so few people? It is very simple to recognize that nowadays, with the development of technology, the change of society and the proliferation of entertainment services, people, especially students are attracted too much on high technological devices such as TV, computer or MP3 recorder Hence, reading habit is now have changed far from before and it is overlooked by most people, especially students Many students are paying too much attention to enjoying catergories of entertainment, getting information from internet or reading e-book instead of reading paper materials as book, newspaper or so on Along with the development of technology, many kinds of electronic book (e-book) in which contain many types of books in all categories and eletronic dictionaries were born Moreover, these kinds of ebooks are very easy to find out on the internet and look up for vocabulary easily as well And it is free or very cheap to read People just need to own a computer or smartphone to access this kind of technological product Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 42 Graduation paper Therefore, it is supposed that paper materials are not useful if students want to find out any information about studying or social knowledge because if students want to find some documents for study in the past they have to buy or rent these ones from bookstore and paper materials is considered as wasting time and money However, this thought is totally wrong It proved that focusing too much on technological devices even searching for knowledge all is mistakes in developing reading skills Why? When using the electronic book and electronic dictionary, students are very difficult to remember the ideas of the text and the unfamiliar words they faced with E-book helps students save time to find the materials to read, however, whatever all have their own the disavantages Finding out the materials so fast and easily will make the students not interested in directly going to bookstore to pick up what they want, and they will become lazy and lazy In addition, with the convenience of technologic tools as e-dictionary, students can easily search the meanings of unfamiliar words in the text they reading, and "easy come, easy go" The disavantage of easily absord the new words from e-dictionary is that students are difficult to remember these words From the writer's another small interview to the first-year students, a fact has been shown that they admit they could not memorize the new words for a long time when they use the dictionary on web the electronic devices such as google translation, v-flat dictionary or so on This is the reason of lacking vocabulary of the first-year students at Faculty of English, H.O.U Thus, to develop the reading skills, the first-year students have to change their reading habits as soon as possible For this aim, the writer of this paper would like to give students some suggestions to change their reading routine Obviously, students should reduce the influence of technological Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 43 Graduation paper devices on their daily study To this step, studetnts need to be aware of the disavantages of these kinds of technological products and the importance of reading paper materials as above, since then limiting using it and focusing on the materials and techniques which help their reading ability go up, especially spending much more time to reading, only does reading and practicing types of reading skills just help students improve their ability of reading and students ought to read as much as possible Implementing the basics of reading improvement To improve reading skills, students should know about combining different ways from the beginning to the end of process of reading to increase the effectiveness of reading When starting reading, students could look at the pictures, listen to music to get a feel for what they are going to read about Then let students start with titles, names or other larger print items that they may know or ever thought about After two steps above, students should read the page carefully Most people think that skimming the text is the way of fast reading but it is not really true Students have better go through the details to comprehend the text as they read it Having an idea about what they are reading about, not just reading and forgetting or failing to grasp the contents During and after reading, students also should remember some basic steps of reading process In spite of being basic steps of reading process but some strategies for enhancing reading skills as follow are usually not paid much attention to by the students Firstly, reread the material It is okay to reread something if they not understand it fully the first time Most students usually focus on the words or the sentences which they could not understand clearly the meanings of these words or sentences and try hard to guess the meanings, but they not focus on reread all the paragraph or text although the meanings could be predicted from the previous or the following sentences or Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 44 Graduation paper paragraph In the next steps, the writer would like students to use context clues to find out a word's meaning Context clues are when a person figures out the meaning of a word by seeing how the word was used in a sentence For example, students were reading the following sentence and wanted to know what 'pessimist' means: My mother is always happy and optimistic, the total opposite of my brother, the pessimist So from the sentence, they can gather that 'pessimist' means the opposite of happy, so pessimist means being moody and angry Good, experienced readers always use context clues! If students find a word that they are totally stumped on, use the dictionary! Next, if students want to improve their confidence with reading, the best way for them is memorize the text The following steps students have to know in reading is reread After completing the reading task but they still not understand clearly the meanings, students should read the text again, maybe once or any times depend on their awareness This step is the one which is usually dismissed by students, and they are always passive when starting to read In addition, the writer would like to remind students one other steps to improve their reading skills is keep reading students should try to read as much as they can on your free time Reading will help them in lots of ways; their vocabulary will become larger and more sophisticated and they will notice they grades change for the better in university Besides, to enhance reading ability, it is necessary for students to practice kind of reading skills like skimming, scanning, intensive or extensive as much as possible to master it in a day soon 3.3 Creating motivation for reading According to the study in the chapter II, the readers can recognize that motivation is a very important aspects which need to improve in developing Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 45 Graduation paper students' reading ability Many students think that reading is a boring skills and they have no interest in reading even it is one of the four most important language skills that a foreign language learner have to master For that reason, students nowadays are poorer in reading skills and when they have a reading test, a bad mark is the result predicted Therefore, creating the motivation to promote students' inspiration in reading is one of the most important task in the research of how to develop reading skills for the first-year students of the writer and the writer will suggest some recommendations to deal with this problem below First of all, it is essential to create the interest for students in reading by encouraging them read the materials which they like to read When students read the materials what they like, the inspiration will be created inside the students' mind, and they will like reading more than before Next, in the classroom, teachers could create the motivation for students by supporting them to play some games related to the reading and let they start with the text which is easy to understand The level of reading text will be increased slowly from lesson to lesson but not applying for them the text difficult to understand in the first lessons because if the text are too difficult to understand will make students bored and not want to read anymore In addition, the teacher could match students to “just right” texts on their reading level that they can read without difficulty or provide a wide variety of texts that are interesting and appropriate for their age range and personally relevant to individual students Moreover, let empower students by allowing them to select their own texts and let student know what to expect Aside from these above suggestions, encouraging students to monitor their own reading progess and supporting them with immediate, coutinuous feedback and encouragement are also the good way to form the motivation in reading for Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 46 Graduation paper students In addition, in the classroom, teachers should use the technology to excite students' interest Finally, both inside and outside classroom, teachers could talk about some books, , discuss about the characters, settings, and plots of stories and the contents of notification books and set expectations for success, let students know the advantages of mastering reading skills It maybe the good way to set the motivation for the students 3.4 Summary of the chapter In summary, as Sherman Alexie said about reading: “If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads", we recognize the important of reading with our life The more book we read, the more survival opportunities we have Therefore, students have to realize the role of improving reading skills with their life, especially with their process of studying When students practice this level of reading, they will provide themselves with a gift that they have rarely been given in their lifetime, it is knowledge Becoming a better readers requires improving behaviour and attitudes They have to understand our reading mistakes so that they can learn to be a better reader Hopefully, the suggestion mentioned above to improve reading skills can help the first-year students correct poor habits and practice good ones Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 47 Graduation paper PART C: CONCLUSION Reading skills are very necessary in our real life and they play an important role in successful receiving information Therefore, teaching and learning reading in English is considered as the most difficult skill to achieve among the four skills Moreover, in the trend of regional and international economic integration, learning of English has been popularized in Vietnam’s universities However, many students have difficulties in reading that are barriers to collect information and deal with statistic well and translate as well This paper was carried out with the purpose of finding some difficulties in the process of learning reading of the first-year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University and giving some suggestion to help the first-year students at Faculty of English, H.O.U improve reading skills The author begins the paper with literature review which set an academic background of reading The second chapter looks at the first-year students’ situation of studying and developing English reading skill as well as difficulties during reading through the survey Based on the survey’s analysis, Chapter III suggest reading strategies and techniques to help students overcome difficulties and make their reading more effective Through my study, I find that many of the first-year students at Faculty of English, HOU have various reasons for their poor reading skills such as laziness, unconcentration, problems in absorbing vocabulary, grammatical structures, etc The purpose of this study is just help students in our Faculty realize their weaknesses and find out suitable methods for studying this subject However, reading is a long-term skill so students should be patient to master this skill.Within about fourty pages of the study, I have tried my own best to fulfill the work However, some imperfections are Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 48 Graduation paper unavoidable, and I hope to get sympathy from readers I would like to get feedback from teachers and friends about any shortcomings of this study Phạm Hoàng Dũng – K19A03 49 REFERENCES Books Broughton, G., Brumfit, C., Flavell, R., Hill, P., & Pincas, A (1978) Teaching English As A Foreign Language London: Routledge & kegan Paul Deane, M.S (2000) Improving reading skills Boston McGraw - Hill D E, Rumelhart (1980) Schemata: The building blocks of cognition Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Dupuy, B Tse L & Cook, T (1996) "Bringing Books Into The Classroom: First Steps in Turning College Level ESL Students Into Readers", TESOL Journal No 5, p.10-15 Garcia, G (1991) Factors influencing the English reading test performance of Spanish speaking Hispanic children (pp.371-392) H Douglas, Brown (1989) Teaching by principle: An Interactive approach to language pedagogy Longman J.A, Ricketts (2007) Reaching the Goal: How managers improve a services business using Goldratt's Theory of Constraints The United States of America IBM Press Krashen, Stephen D (1982) The Input Hypothesis Issues and Implications Longman (p10) Long, M H., & Richards, J C (1987) Methodology in TESOL: A reader Rowley, Mass Newbury House 10 Nuttall, Christine (1982) Teaching reading skills in a foreign language, London: Heinemann Educational Books 11 Richard C, Anderson (1985) Becoming a nation of readers: The report of the Commission on reading Washington D.C, The National Institue of Education 12 Ronald Mackay., Bruce Barkman., R R Jordan (1968) Reading in a second language Newbury House Publishers 13 Pugh, A.K (1978) Silent Reading - an introduction to its study and teaching, London: Heinemamm Educational Books 14 Qian, D.D & Schedl, M (2004) Evaluation of an in-depth vocabulary knowledge for assessing reading performance 15 Theodore, L Harris Richard, E Hodges (1995) Literacy Dictionary International Reading Association (pp 282 - 283) 16 Zhongmin Qian (2002) System Control and Rough paths Oxford science publications 17 Wixson, K., Peters, C., Weber, E., & Roeber, I (1987)."New directions in statewide reading assessment."The Reading Teacher,40 (pp.749-755) Websites http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/jblanton/read/readingdef.htm http://fis.ucalgary.ca/Brian/611/readingtype.html#scanning http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-some-factors-affecting- reading-390931 https://coerll.utexas.edu/methods/modules/reading/01/ https://www.eduplace.com/rdg/res/teach/def.html http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/authors/pdfs/Raising_Students.pdf http://www.upb.pitt.edu/uploadedFiles/reading%20skills.pdf http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/study/reading http://www.studyskills.soton.ac.uk/studytips/reading_skills.htm 10 http://www.langports.com/tips-improve-english-skim-scan/ 11 http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/5/1/47.full.pdf 12.http://www.howtolearn.com/2013/02/skimming-and-scanning-twoimportant-strategies-for-speeding-up-your-reading/ APPENDIX SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE Please encircle your answer Feel free to answer the questions honestly and without hesitation We respect your confidentiality that is why are conducting this survey unanimously This is part of our intensive effort to help you better in learning reading skills at university In some questions, you could choose more than one answer 1/ When did you start learning English? A Under years old B From 11 years old C After 15 years old 2/ How you find reading skills? A Difficult B A little difficult C Very difficult D Not difficult 3/ Do you think reading is a important skill? A Very important B Important C Little important D Not important 4/ How are you interested in reading? A Quite a lot B A lot C A little D Not at all 5/ How you feel in reading lesson? A Excited B Good C Uncomfortable D Boring 6/ Which factors affect you most in reading skills? A New words B Motivation C Grammar structure D Background knowledge E Other reasons 7/ Do your teachers often give or advice you any techniques to read effectively? A Often B Sometimes C Rarely D Never 8/ Which types of reading exercises you find interesting? A True/False statement B Gap filling C Summarizing D Answering comprehension questions E Reading and choosing the main idea F Reading and answering mutiple choices 9/ Which types of reading skills you often use while reading in class? A Scanning B Skimming C Predicting the unfamiliar words D Making inferences G Summarizing H Reading and note-taking 10/ How are your reading result in first-term test? A Excellent (10) B Very good (8-9) C Good (6-7) D Satisfactory (5) E Unsatisfactory (under 5) 11/ How important you think about improving reading skills? A Very important B Important C Little important 12/ How often you practice reading at home? A Often B Sometimes C Rarely D Never 13/ Do you often read English materials as newspapers, novels, books, and so on at home? A Often B Sometimes C Rarely D Never 14/ Which materials you want to apply for reading skills in class? A Textbook only B Textbook and supplementary materials C Sources from internet D Others Write down your answer : The End