Using Barrett’s Taxonomy to Enhance High School Students’Reading Comprehension

Research Title: Using Barrett’s Taxonomy to Enhance High School Students’ Reading Comprehension.. It is not only an important means of gaining knowledge but also a means by which further

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI

Đơn vị : THPT Ngô Quyền

_

Mã số: ………

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

Người thực hiện: Trần Văn Nghĩa

Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu:

Quản lý giáo dục Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn Phương pháp giáo dục

Lĩnh vực khác:

Có đính kèm:

Năm học:2011-2012

SƠ LƯỢC LÝ LỊCH KHOA HỌC

I THÔNG TIN CHUNG VỀ CÁ NHÂN

1 Họ và tên: Trần Văn Nghĩa

2 Ngày tháng năm sinh : 20/11/1963

3 Nam/Nữ: Nam

4 Địa chỉ: B 28, Khu phố 6, Phường -Tam hiệp- Biên Hoà -Đồng Nai

5 Điện thoại: Cơ quan: 0613829029 Nhà riêng: 0913130131

7 Chức vụ: Tổ trưởng tổ tiếng Anh

8 Đơn vị công tác: THPT Ngô Quyền –Biên Hoà-Đồng Nai

II TRÌNH ĐỘ ĐÀO TẠO

- Học vị (hoặc trình độ chuyên môn, nghiệp vụ) cao nhất: Thạc sĩ

- Năm nhận bằng: 2001

- Chuyên ngành đào tạo: Thạc sĩ chuyên ngành giảng dạy tiếng Anh

- Lĩnh vực chuyên môn có kinh nghiệm: Giảng dạy tiếng Anh

- Số năm có kinh nghiệm: 20 năm

- Các sáng kiến kinh nghiệm đã có trong 5 năm gần đây:

1 Making speaking tasks and activities more effective and

easier for high school students

2 Improving High School Students’ Written Competence Through Teaching Grammar in Context

SỞ Giáo Dục & Đào Tạo Đồng Nai CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM

Đơn vị: THPT Ngô Quyền Độc lập - Tự do - Hạnh phúc

Biên Hoà ngày … tháng … năm…

PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT, ĐÁNH GIÁ SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM Năm học: 2011-2012

Tên sáng kiến kinh nghiệm: Using Barrett’s Taxonomy to Enhance High School Students’Reading Comprehension

Họ và tên tác giả: Trần Văn Nghĩa Đơn vị (Tổ): Tiếng Anh

Lĩnh vực:

Quản lý giáo dục Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn

Phương pháp giáo dục Lĩnh vực khác

1 Tính mới:

- Có giải pháp hoàn toàn mới

- Có giải pháp cải tiến, đổi mới từ giải pháp đã có

2 Hiệu quả:

- Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao

- Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao

- Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng tại đơn vị có hiệu quả cao

- Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng tại đơn vị có hiệu quả

3 Khả năng áp dụng:

- Cung cấp được các luận cứ khoa học cho việc hoạch định đường lối, chính sách:

Tốt Khá Đạt

- Đưa ra các giải pháp khuyến nghị có khả năng ứng dụng thực tiễn, dễ thực hiện và

dễ đi vào cuộc sống: Tốt Khá Đạt

- Đã được áp dụng trong thực tế đạt hiệu quả hoặc có khả năng áp dụng đạt hiệu quả trong phạm vi rộng Tốt Khá Đạt

XÁC NHẬN CỦA TỔ CHUYÊN MÔN THỦ TRƯỞNG ĐƠN VỊ

(Ký tên và ghi rõ họ tên) (Ký tên, ghi rõ họ tên và đóng dấu)

Research Title: Using Barrett’s Taxonomy to Enhance High School Students’ Reading Comprehension.

CONTENTS

1 Introduction

2 Problems

3 Purpose of the study.

4 Barrett’s Taxonomy

5 Literature Review

6 Application

7.Anticipated Outcomes

8 Implications for teaching and learning

9 Conclusion

Introduction

The purpose of teaching English is to help the students use it as a means of communication in real-life contexts It is necessary for the students to make use of English to exchange information, to state their opinions, and to express their feelings Nowadays, English is used as the most popular and international language, and many people in Vietnam, especially people in Dong Nai , an industrial province need to use it

as a communicative tool at work, on business or in commercial environments

It is recognized that the main focus of learning English as a foreign language is heavily

on communicative competence The more opportunities students are given to practice using English in the classroom, the more effectively and fluently they can use in real-life situations Therefore, as teachers of English, in order to increase communication in the classroom, there are a number of things we need to do, for example : effective teaching activities or methods, task adaptation , and students’ involvement, for the communicative level of Vietnamese students, I think , is still underdeveloped On the other hand, the communicative needs are much more challenging than students’ communicative competence As an attempt to improve the students’ reading skill, my first concern would

be on questioning techniques

Problems

In all of the high schools in Viet Nam , we have already used English 10, English 11 and

English 12 as compulsory course books in the curriculum, and we also know that the three books above have many good points and certain limitations

The course aims, according to the curriculum, are to help the students develop the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing In daily discussion with the students, I know that they want to learn English for communication However, in my own experience of teaching, I have known that they have very few learning strategies for using the language, especially for reading comprehension.What they do in a reading lessoon is to copy what the teacher already writes on the board They then translate words ,sentences into Vietnamese before completing exercises, or answering the teacher’s questions

In reality, reading comprehension is one of the most complex but crucial skill of the four language skills for students learning English as a second or foreign language It is not only an important means of gaining knowledge but also a means by which further studies take place, so teaching reading comprehension is very important to teachers of English in general, and to high school teachers in particular This is also true for the teachers of English at Ngo Quyen High School, but the way in which they conduct the teaching of reading comprehension to students should be taken into consideration Although they know the significance of reading comprehension, they think that vocabulary and grammar are much more important Therefore in real-life teaching situations, most teachers focus

on presenting vocabulary and practicing tasks on vocabulary In observing three reading classes, I know that what the teachers do in a language class is to test reading rather than to teach reading , to foster passive learners rather than active and dynamic ones

In addition, one of the most common ways for teachers to check reading comprehension is using sets of questions given in their text books These questions are

usually at literal comprehension or reorganization levels, which do not activate students’ higher levels of thinking These types of questions can be answered without considering context clues or even without understanding the meaning of the passage or the writer’s intention These literal comprehension questions just help students to scratch the surface

of a text, while it is the responsibility of reading that helps the reader get deeper understanding of a passage

As a researcher, I want to improve students’ reading skills and their levels of thinking The research on teaching reading would be of great benefit to the students, teachers of English and administrators in my school It is expected that the research findings will help teachers in other schools who are in the same teaching situation make

an innovation in English teaching for the sake of students

Purpose of the study.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of Barrett’s taxonomy on the development of reading skills of the ten graders in Ngo Quyen High School The study also aims at introducing the Barrett’s taxonomy to the teachers in my school so that they can use this theoretical framework as a tool to maximize students’ thinking in reading comprehension In addition, this framework can also be used for analyzing instructional materials and designing relevant types of questions for students of different levels The following questions are considered the focus of my research proposal:

- To what extent does the application of Barrett’s Taxonomy improve students’ reading comprehension skill in Baoloc high school?

- How do teachers in Ngo Quyen High school feel about question levels in reading comprehension ?

Barrett's Taxonomy

Of the many taxonomies which have tried to categorize reading comprehension, Barrett' s taxonomy of reading comprehension (Clymer,1968), designed originally to assist classroom teachers in developing comprehension questions and test questions for reading, is widely accepted as a useful tool for classroom questioning This taxonomy consists of five categories presented as follows,

With this taxonomy, teachers can frame questions at different levels of understanding so that these questions meet different levels of proficiency of English in a mixed ability class Barrett’s Taxonomy can serve as a useful guide to the student to identify the purposes of his or her reading of a given text

In order to find out about how our students are processing information in their reading activities, there is a scale of comprehension By using of Barrett's scale of

comprehension below,we can ensure a balance between all 5 levels

1 Literal comprehension

(Lowest) Students identify information directly stated

2 Reorganization

Students organize or order the information in a different way than it was presented

3 Inference -inferential comprehension

Students respond to information implied but not directly stated

4 Evaluation

Students make judgments in light of the material

5 Appreciation

(Highest) Students give an emotional or image-based response

Literal comprehension Reorganization comprehension Inferential comprehension

Evaluation appreciation

Literature Review

In EFL there are many approaches to reflect top down and bottom up processes through interactive exercises and tasks The use of questions is an integral aspect of such activities, and well-designed comprehension questions help students interact with the text

to create or construct meaning We believe that it is critical that teachers help their students create meaning and it is obvious that comprehension questions at higher levels

of thinking help our students begin to think critically and intelligently

We know that reading is an interactive process in which the reader constructs meaning with the text We need to help our students learn to do this This means going beyond a literal understanding of a text, and allowing our students to use their own knowledge while reading According to Crisp (1978) when questions is beyond a literal understanding, students' answers have to be motivated by information in the text Inferential questions can have clearly correct responses In contrast, prediction and evaluative answers may be correct or incorrect as long as they depend primarily on students' reactions to what they read Evaluative answers not only depend primarily on students' reactions to what they have read, but they need to reflect a broad understanding

of the text

Another reason for using a variety of questions is that they involve different types

of comprehension Guszak (1967, cited in Pearson and Johnson, 1972, p.154) stated that students could perform best when answering questions of factual recall, which is the type

of question that their teachers ask most often This means that students can do best at what they have been taught and practiced Thus, if we want our students to be able to reach deeper understanding of a text, then it is necessary to teach them how to do this and

to give them opportunities to work with different types of comprehension

Barrett’s Taxonomy of comprehension types is an overview of types of understanding that foreign language learners need to have if they are to read a text with more than a literal understanding

The taxonomy of the types of comprehension questions may also be used as a checklist for language teachers to make their own comprehension questions for texts that their students read to help them understand better what they read in reading comprehension lessons in school In addition, they can be used to develop materials to ensure that the various levels of questions are used to help students improve their reading skills as well

as respond to a variety of types of comprehension

Barrett’s Taxonomy has also been very useful to teachers by helping them to focus on specific learner outcomes which they can emphasize in class It also serves as a guide in the preparation of tests which can be incorporated into future exams Hence, it should be mentioned that the taxonomy presented here can also be used as a means for teaching especially for reading classes

By considering the nature of reading comprehension and the advantages of Barrett’s taxonomy in teaching reading comprehension, the researcher strongly believe that the application of Barrett’s taxonomy can help improve reading comprehension skills among grade ten students in Ngo Quyen High School We should consider the following example

ENGLISH 10-PAGE 13

Unit 1 : A DAY IN THE LIFE OF…

Mr.Vy: The alarm goes off at 4:30 I get up and go down to the kitchen to boil some

water for my morning tea I drink several cups of tea, have a quick breakfast and then lead the buffolo to the field It takes me 45 minutes to get ready I leave the house at a quarter past five and arrive in the field at exactly 5:30 I plough and harrow my plot of land and at a quarter to eight I take a short rest During my break I often drink tea with

my fellow peasants and smoke tobacco I continue to work from a quarter past eight till 10:30.Then I go home take a short rest and have lunch with my family at 11:30 After lunch I take an hour’s rest

Mrs.Tuyet: At 2:30 in the afternoon we go to the field again.We repair the banks of our

plot of land.Then my husband pumps water into it while I do the transplanting We work for about two hours before we take a rest.We finish our work at 6 p.m We have dinner at about 7 p.m, then we watch TV and go to bed at about 10 p.m Sometimes we go and see our neighbours for a cup of tea.We chat about our work, our children and our plans for the next crop Although it’s a long day for us, we are contented with what we do.We love working and we love our children

( Original Questions in the text book)

N0 Questions

1 What is Mr.Vy’s occupation?

2 What time does he get up and what does he do after that?

3 What does he do in the morning?

4 What do Mr.Vy and his wife do in theafternoon ?

5 Are they happy with their lives or not? Why?

APPLICATION ( Questions designed for enhancing students’ critical thinking)

1 What is Mr.Vy’s occupation?

2 What time does he get up and what does he do after that?

3 What does he do in the morning?

4 What do Mr.Vy and his wife do in theafternoon ?

5 Are they happy with their lives or not?Why?

6 Why does MrVy smoke local tobacco ?

What is the purpose of smoking local tobacco ?

Literal Comprehension

(Recall of Cause and Effect Relationship)

7 What do you think will happen if the alarm doesn’t go off ? Evaluation

(Judgments based

on the reader’s moral code or his or her value system)

8 What is meant by the phrase “are contented with” ? Inferential

Comprehension

(InterpretingFigurative Language)

9 What words will describe the feelings of happiness? Appreciation

(eliciting responses from the reader who demonstrates

his or her sensitivity to, sympathy for, and empathy

with characters or happenings ).

10 Tell Mr.Vy’s day of working in your own words Reorganization

( using direct or paraphrased

statements from the selection)

Anticipated Outcomes

The research is in the hope that he will find out the positive effects of applying Barrett’s Taxonomy into teaching reading comprehension First, it may reveal that the question levels in reading lessons are commonly at literal and reorganization comprehension, which may discourage some good students from learning reading Second, the data collected from the classroom observation may show that when applying Barrett’s Taxonomy into reading comprehension, teacher can activate students schemata and help them move beyond the literal comprehension to understand the writer’s intentions or pragmatics It may also reveal that with Barrett’ Taxonomy