THE EFFECTS OF USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS ON STUDENTS READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT AT LE HOAN HIGH SCHOOL

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* DƯƠNG THI ̣ THU HIỀN THE EFFECTS OF USING

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

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

DƯƠNG THI ̣ THU HIỀN

THE EFFECTS OF USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS ON STUDENTS READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT AT

LE HOAN HIGH SCHOOL

Hiệu quả của việc sử dụng tài liệu thực đối với thành tích học tập

kỹ năng đọc hiểu của học sinh - nghiên cứu ở trường

Trung ho ̣c phổ thông Lê Hoàn

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

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

DƯƠNG THI ̣ THU HIỀN

THE EFFECTS OF USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS ON STUDENTS READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT AT

LE HOAN HIGH SCHOOL

Hiệu quả của việc sử dụng tài liệu thực đối với thành tích học tập

kỹ năng đọc hiểu của học sinh - nghiên cứu ở trường

Trung ho ̣c phổ thông Lê Hoàn

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Hoàng Thị Xuân Hoa, Ph.D

HANOI – 2017

DECLARATION

I hereby certify that the thesis “ The effects of using authentic materials

on students reading comprehension achievement at Le Hoan High School”

is submitted for the partial fulfillment of the Degree of Master of Arts at the Faculty of Post Graduate Studies – University of Languages and International Studies – Vietnam National University, Hanoi I also declare that this thesis is result of my own research and efforts and that it has not been submitted for

any other purposes

Hanoi, 2017 Signature

Dương Thị Thu Hiền

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to show my deep gratitude to all the lecturers at University of Language and International Studies – Vietnam National University, Hanoi for the invaluable lecturers, which laid the foundation for my thesis

I would also like to express my sincerest gratitude to Dr Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, my respected supervisor for her precious guidance, critical comments and constructive supervision throughout my research

My gratitude also goes to the students and colleagues at Le Hoan High Schools who enthusiastically participated in the research procedure Without their help, this project could not be fulfilled

Last but not least, I am indebted to my beloved family and friends who have unfailingly inspired me to complete this study

ABSTRACT

The study was conducted with the hope that the result gained could clarify the effects of using authentic materials on students reading comprehension achievement at Le Hoan High School In order to achieve the goals, quasi-experimental research design was employed Subjects of the study were two groups of 30 students each of 10th grade – students at Le Hoan High School One group was assigned as the experimental group and the other as the control group The students of both groups were taught with the same teaching techniques, the same teaching topics and did the same tests but with different types of teaching materials in an 8-week-period While the experimental group used authentic materials provided by the teacher, the control group only used materials in the course book - English 10 published

by the Ministry of Education and Training A pretest and a posttest were used

to measure the improvement in the reading skill of the students in the two groups

The research results showed that the reading skill of the students who worked with authentic materials was better improved than that of the students working with only course book The former seemed to be able to avoid some typical mistakes about vocabulary which the students in control group often made Therefore it is suggested that authentic materials be used

in teaching reading skill for high school students in order to get the highest results English teachers also need to be creative in selecting, developing and providing teaching materials to their students

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES vi

LIST OF CHARTS vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 The research question and objectives of the study 3

3 The scope of the study 3

4 Significance of the study 3

5 Methods of the study 4

6 Design of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1 Theoretical background 5

1.1 Overview on reading skill 5

1.1.1 Definition of reading 5

1.1.2 Reading comprehension 6

1.1.3 Reading comprehension achievement 7

1.1.4 Types of reading comprehension question 8

1.2 Overview on authentic materials 10

1.2.1 Definition of authentic materials 10

1.2.2 Types of authentic materials 11

1.2.3 Advantages of authentic materials on students reading comprehension achievement 11

1.2.4 Disadvantages of authentic materials on students reading comprehension

achievement 14

2 Literature review 16

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY 19

1 Methodology 19

1.1 The applied methodology in the research 19

1.2 Quasi-experimental design 19

2 Research design 19

2.1 The subjects of the study 20

2.2 Selecting teaching materials 20

2.3 Teaching procedure 23

2.4 Measuring participants’ competence 24

2.4.1 Data collection instrument 24

2.4.2 Procedures of data collection 25

2.4.3 Procedure of data analysis 26

CHAPTER III: RESULT ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 27

1 Result analysis 27

1.1 Pretest result analysis 27

1.2 Post-test result analysis 29

1.3 Analysis pre-test and post-test results within each group 33

2 Discussion 35

PART C: CONCLUSION 37

1 Conclusion 37

2 Implications 38

3 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research 39

REFERENCES 40 APPENDICES I

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Description of Pre-test Result 28

Table 2: Description of post-test result 30

Table 3: Independent Sample T-test for Post-test result 32

Table 4: Paired Sample T-test for pre-test and post-test 33

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 1: Pretest scores 27

Chart 2: Post-test results 29

Chart 3: Control group’s results 34

Chart 4: Experimental group’s results 34

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

The study is based on the current situation of teaching and learning English reading skill of students at Le Hoan High School Having been working as an English teacher at Le Hoan High School for 5 years, the writer realizes an issue that utilizing only reading materials in the course books is not enough to help students improve their reading skill They find

it difficult to learn vocabulary as well as the structures in these texts because of their unfamiliarity in real life Therefore, they have low motivation in learning reading and their reading comprehension cannot ameliorate over a long time This fact has been shown clearly in the results

of entrance examinations at high school in the recent years since the form and structure of English test was changed Most of students at Le Hoan High School can not do the reading section well whereas this section takes account for approximately 50 percentages of the total scores Therefore the proportion of the students who get high mark in the exams at Le Hoan High School is very low And the only way to increase the number of high marks

is improving students’ reading comprehension competence Although the English teachers at Le Hoan School have tried their best to encourage their students to learn reading skill and improve their achievement by using different positive teaching techniques, it seems not to bring about much effectiveness

Moreover, reading skill is one of the most important skills to each of students during their foreign language learning procedure To feature the importance of reading comprehension, Rivers (1981:147 ) asserted that “

Reading is the most important activity in any language class, not only as a source of information and a pleasurable activity, but also as a means of consolidating and extending one's which are knowledge of the language” In

spite of its critical role, reading skill remains a challenge to students Taglieber (1988) has indicated three major problems that interfere with students’ reading comprehension: (1) _ Lack of vocabulary (2) _ Difficulty

in using language cues to meaning (3) _ Lack of conceptual knowledge That is the reason why the question how to teach reading skill for students to get the best result is always controversial among the educators It has been said that suitable teaching materials play an important role in motivating students during their learning procedure and help them have certain amount

of background knowledge about different topics which they can meet in different reading texts As a result, it can limit the problems that prevent the students from mastering reading skill well Implementing authentic materials

in teaching reading skill has taken the concern of many teachers all over the world There has been a lot of research debating about this problem since the 1970s; however most of the findings can not be assured to be true to all learners Some of the previous studies carried out by Soliman (2013); Akbari

&Razavi (2016); Pandian (2011); Le Thi Huong Giang (2015); Vu Mai Duyen (2015) mention using authentic materials in teaching and learning a foreign language, they all confirmed that this type of teaching materials brought about positive effects Nevertheless the subjects of all these studies are college students; the findings needed checking again with the lower-level subjects The current research was desired to clarify the effects of authentic materials on students’ reading comprehension at Le Hoan High School It would help the writer to see whether it could have the same results as the previous research or not And the findings of the current study would be a base for the author to decide if authentic materials could be suitable teaching materials to students at Le Hoan High School

2 The research question and objectives of the study

When doing the study, there are a lot of issues which need finding out and making clear However, the most important one focused on the current study is investigating the effects of using authentic materials on students reading comprehension achievement at Le Hoan High School

To accomplish the objectives, the research mainly concentrated on answering the following research question: “What are the effects of using authentic materials on students’ reading comprehension achievement?”

3 The scope of the study

The study is a small-sized scale thesis, thus it can not cover all the issues related to the problem discussed The paper mainly focuses on the effects of using authentic materials on students reading comprehension achievement at

Le Hoan High School, Thanh Liem district, Ha Nam province The subjects

in the study are 60 students of 10th grade at Le Hoan High School They are randomly chosen and divided into two groups, one experimental group and one control group

An important point of the study needs emphasizing that authentic materials provided to experimental group is only used as a supplementary materials besides the reading materials taken out from the course book and the reading

activities in class

4 Significance of the study

The result of the study will be a foundation to help the English teachers especially the English teachers at Le Hoan High School who are looking for

a new method in teaching reading skill to their students It supplies not only

a large amount of valuable information about applying authentic materials but also some suggestions for the teachers in selecting suitable authentic materials

5 Methods of the study

In order to determine the effects of authentic materials on students reading comprehension achievement, the researcher utilizes quasi-experimental with sixty 10th grade students at Le Hoan High School The pretest and posttest are conducted at the beginning and the end of the research period The data collected is analyzed with SPSS

6 Design of the study

The study consists of three parts

PART A: Introduction provides the rationale, the scope, the research questions and objectives; the significance and the design of the study

PART B: Development, discusses the following contents of the study: Chapter 1: Literature Review, discusses the literature relating reading skill; reading comprehension; authenticity and authentic materials as well as the use of authentic materials in teaching English reading skill

Chapter 2: Methodology, defines the methodology of the research including features of the participants, settings, research methods, data collection and data analysis procedure

Chapter 3: Results, presents and discusses the findings from the data collected

PART C: Conclusion, summarizes significant findings, highlights contributions of the research, addresses notable limitations, and puts forward practical suggestions for future research

PART B: DEVELOMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Theoretical background

The study focuses on studying the effects of using authentic materials on students reading comprehension achievement Therefore, in the writing there are some terms used frequently as the key words such as authentic materials, reading comprehension and reading comprehension achievement

1.1 Overview on reading skill

1.1.1 Definition of reading

There are a lot of different definitions of reading activity Although every linguistic gives out the definitions by their own words, most of them share the same idea that reading is a crucial skill in learning procedure and it is considered as an integral skill to help students to gain information and expand their background knowledge When reading, the readers can not just focus on the meaning of individual word; the most importance of reading is that they must use the knowledge of linguistics to find out the meaning hidden behind the printed text To support the idea Weir (1993) states that reading is seen as a selective process taking place between the reader and text, in which background knowledge and various types of language knowledge interact with information in the text to contribute text comprehension Another definition stated by Cooper et al (1988) is that reading, as one of the language skills to be taught, is a process of constructing or developing meaning of printed text In addition, Grabe and Stoller (2002) suppose that reading is the ability of drawing meaning and interpreting information in the printed page appropriate According to Williams (1989), reading is a process of looking at and understanding what has been written Similarly, Goodman (2009) contends that reading is an essential interaction between language and thought in which the writer

encodes his thoughts as language and the reader decodes the language into thought Haris and Sipay (1980) considers, reading - (comprehending) as a result of interaction between the perception of graphic symbols that represent language and the readers’ language skill and knowledge of the world

In short, the term reading can be defined in many different ways with a certain difference in the opinion of the linguists However, most of them agree that a successful reading process must draw out the message behind the words used by the writer Thus, reading is an interaction between the readers and the writers

In a nutshell, reading comprehension is the ability of the readers in understanding the meaning of a text By gathering the information stated in

the text with their background knowledge and some sub-reading skills, the students can draw out the implied message As stated by Suparman (2012) the sub-reading skills that a reader should master to deeply understand the text; for instance, identifying main idea, identifying details, understanding vocabulary, making inference and making reference are really important to students’ improvement

1.1.3 Reading comprehension achievement

After finishing a reading course, reading comprehension achievement of students is what a teacher expects most To know whether or not the students make progress, an achievement test may be conducted As Grellet (1996) says reading comprehension achievement can be defined as the successful result of students’ comprehension in guessing, predicting, and understanding the written text by doing such an achievement test The test

is a tool to assess learning procedure of learners Therefore, reading comprehension achievement is expected to be good to fulfill individual improvement in academic performance

In addition, another linguist Mc Whorter (1989) supposes that reading comprehension achievement covers some aspects such as word comprehension, sentence comprehension, paragraph comprehension and text comprehension

As appreciated by many scholars, an individual may comprehend a text fully when he can:

1 Recognize the words and sentences of the text and know what these words and sentences mean (obtain literal meaning)

2 Associated meanings, both denotative and connotative from personal experiences with the printed text (obtain inferential meaning)

3 Recognize how all these meanings and/or his perceptions of them fit together contextually

4 Make value judgments about, and based on the reading experience (read critically)

It means that a good achievement test must inspect students’ comprehension about all aspects above

1.1.4 Types of reading comprehension question

There are a number of reading comprehension question types that the test takers often have to deal with in the reading section To overcome these types of questions well, the examinees need to recognize the question types quickly, and understand the aim of the questions as well as the common traits of correct and incorrect answers According to Peterson’s (2000) and the forms of the questions often appearing in the test, the test takers often meet the main types of questions as follows

 Main idea

The main idea question requests the test taker to make out what the passage or the paragraph is discussing about It is often found in the topic sentence which is at the beginning or at the ending of the passage It includes

a topic and a something about the topic Thus, the test taker must be able to identify the thesis of the passage and those ideas that support this thesis

 Supporting idea

Supporting idea question, in fact, is the question about the specific information stated in the passage It often begins with “according to the passage” or “the passage states that” The answer to the question is contained in two or three sentences If the test taker has a better ability to find a specific piece of information, he will be able to find the answer more easily

 Inference

Inference question is said to be one of the most difficult questions in the reading section because it does not ask directly stated information in the passage Actually, the candidates must make conclusion based on the directly stated information Most these questions are often prefaced by "the passage implies" or "the author implies", where "suggests" is sometimes substituted

 Tone & Style

The tone question is the one which refers to the predominant emotion or absence of it displayed by the author Answering this type of question is that the examinee must specify the attitude of the author toward the subject or the character in the passage Naturally, the tone can be classified as subjective or objective If the author has an objective attitude, he will not choose any side

On the contrary, his attitude will be subjective

 Passage Structure

Passage structure is the way the author arranges the supporting ideas in the paragraph Any arrangement of the ideas also reflects the author’s purpose when writing the paragraph Thus, the key to this type of question is the relationship between the ideas with the passage Only when the test takers understand this, they can find out the logical order

 Vocabulary-in-context question

Vocabulary-in-context question is the one that asks the candidate to make out the suitable meaning of a specific word in the passage based on the context A single word may have more than a meaning, but only the most suitable one can be used in the paragraph

1.2 Overview on authentic materials

1.2.1 Definition of authentic materials

Any teacher who would like to improve their students’ comprehension achievement, he needs to motivate them during the learning procedure by using suitable teaching materials Only when being taught by the materials they are interested in, can the students gain a good achievement On finding materials that meets the teachers and students’ needs, most of the researchers started concerning the term “authentic materials” and agreed that authentic materials should be brought into classes Defined by Nunan (1989); “any material which has not been specifically produced for the purpose of language teaching.” (Cited in Macdonald, Badger &White, 2000) Similarly, Wong (1995) defines authentic materials as the materials which are used in genuine communication in the real world and it is not specifically prepared for the teaching and learning of English Except for these two scholars, there are some other ones sharing this point of view such as Nunan (1988), Jordan (1997) and Herod (2002) Besides, to make the definition of authentic materials more clearly by supporting some examples, Grellet (1996) gives out his own definition that authenticity is no change of the original text and its presentation and lay out are retained A newspaper article, for instance, should be presented as it first appeared in the paper with the same typeface, space devoted to the headlines, and pictures

Thus, authentic materials can be understood simply that it is a kind of materials which is used in our daily life to solve real social situations They are not redesigned for language teaching purposes

1.2.2 Types of authentic materials

As mentioned above, source of authentic materials is very plentiful because it can be anything that supports for our life They are not only newspapers, magazines but also songs, web pages, radio, TV broadcasts, films, leaflets, flyers, posters They are both in written form and spoken form In fact, it depends on the topic, the purpose of the lesson and the interest of the learners, the teacher can find and choose the suitable type and form of authentic materials to bring into classes Although there are so many types of authentic materials listed According to Genhard (1996), they can be classified into three categories including:

1 Authentic printed materials, such as sports reports, newspapers, restaurant menus, train tickets, etc

2 Authentic listening materials, such as radio news, cartoons, songs, etc

3 Authentic visual materials, such as street signs, magazines and newspapers pictures, post cards, etc

1.2.3 Advantages of authentic materials on students reading comprehension achievement

As mentioned above, applying authentic materials on learners reading comprehension achievement has been taken into account in numerous studies In these studies, the effectiveness of using authentic materials in teaching reading skill has been confirmed Many researchers who approve of using authentic materials to teach a foreign language emphasize the usefulness of authentic materials They suppose that it is the way of employing formulaic teaching materials from text books written with classroom dialogue practices that are artificial, thus presenting a gap from real life language among language teachers, which destroys students’ motivation in learning language, whereas motivation is considered as a key factor helping them involve in mastering a foreign language To change the

situation, they also express that replacing the traditional materials by authentic materials which were written for native speakers of certain communication and will be used by the speakers of the language in communication circumstances outside of the classroom Some famous researchers support for this ideas such as Guariento and Morley, 2001; Paltridge, 2001; Shrum and Glisan, 2000 Most of them agree that this kind

of materials increase the learners’ motivation toward reading Especially, Otte, 2006 and Thanajaro, 2000 clearly showed that after utilizing authentic materials in language classroom, the improvement of learners’ self-satisfaction and motivation go up remarkably In addition to, Guariento

&Morely, 2001 say that authentic materials help motivate learners learn the language by making them feel that they are learning the 'real' language And Hyland (2003) states that one of the most important advantages of using authentic materials is that it increases learners’ motivation and reflect positively on the learning process Explaining the reason why authentic materials is often more highly appreciated than text books Speller (2002) and Rizgiyah (2009) say that authentic materials can be up to date and related to the everyday issues and activities The use of authentic materials

in the classroom can motivate the students because there are three layers of learning that are: language learning (the structure and vocabulary), cultural insight, and practical application In fact, the teachers can explore an abundant source of authentic materials from real life such as magazines, newspapers, street signs, etc According to Genhard (1996), there are three types of authentic materials that the educators can choose to make it suitable with the purpose of each lesson The first type is authentic listening materials such as radio news, cartoons, songs,…The second one is authentic visual materials such as street signs, magazines and newspapers pictures, postcards… and the last one is authentic printed materials such as sport

reports, newspapers, restaurant menus, train tickets, etc Therefore, when teachers use authentic materials as teaching aid in language classroom, they not only teach their students a basic language skill but also build a foundation of social knowledge for the learners They easily find out a relationship between the knowledge and skills learnt at school and the real life In general, most of the researchers share the same point of the usefulness of authentic materials Peacock (1997) says that there are some advantages of using authentic materials in the classroom, they are: original, interesting, motivating and useful Garcia (1991) claims that using authentic reading materials help to improve the learners' cultural awareness Sherman (2003), mentions that the importance of authentic material reside in the fact that "it is a window into culture” Kilickaya (2004) states that using authentic materials helps to increase learners' motivation for learning a language, because they feel that they are practicing a real language used beyond the classroom In addition, Thanajaro (2000) and Otte (2006) concluded in their studies that authentic materials have a positive effect on learners' motivation and encourage them to learn better When talking about the effectiveness of this teaching aid in developing students reading comprehension, Harmer (1994) points out some benefits such as helping learners produce better language; helping learners acquire the language faster and making learners more confident to deal with real life situations Finally, Berardo (2006) having experienced using authentic materials, notices that they contributed in increasing his learners' motivation and he himself, likes using them From two experiments conducted by Lestari (2007) and Pramediastuti (2007), the results recorded showed that the students’ reading comprehension achievement after teacher applied authentic materials in teaching is considerable Lestari (2007) found that authentic materials can improve the students reading comprehension achievement

from 59.47% in cycle 1 to 78.37% in cycle 2 In a word, lots f scholars have the same ideas about the advantages of authentic materials in foreign language classroom and the findings of their studies done are also suitable with their point of views

1.2.4 Disadvantages of authentic materials on students reading comprehension achievement

Although authentic materials are considered as a good source of language

teaching materials, they also bring about some disadvantages Some other

researchers state their ideas about the drawback of authentic materials The first point they point out is the difficulties of vocabulary as well as structures used in daily objects such as newspapers; magazines or streets signs In these materials, a large number of words are written in abbreviation form, many words are slang which is used in certain communication Thus authentic materials cannot be appropriate for students, especially weak students who will feel tired of these materials if they do not understand even the words appearing in the text assigned by the teachers A scholar, Kilickaya (2004), claims that authentic materials add a burden on teachers, as they may contain difficult vocabulary and structures which need more effort to be simplified and explained, in order to make them appropriate for their learners The second point mentioned in some research studies is the difficult content of the authentic texts They argue that most of the authentic materials which are not easy for the language learners to follow their content because they contain the socio-cultural problems and they are far from students’ background knowledge Another scholar Martinez (2002) says that authentic materials are regarded too culturally biased and difficult to comprehend by learners in the classroom Besides, he also discusses the issue related to the cultural effect, that “authentic texts from one culture may give a false impression to students from another, unless they are presented in an

authentic context which makes it clear precisely what they exemplify” For this reason, if a language teacher still wants to employ an authentic material

in his lecture, he has to select the materials carefully to ensure that they are suitable with their students’ competence Additionally, when making lesson plan the teacher needs to forecast the difficulties that students may meet during the learning process, for instance the difficult words ; the complex structures However, this job can take the teachers a lot of time Miller (2005) states that authentic materials are “too difficult and time consuming

to select, edit and prepare” Furthermore, some researchers also mention other problems of using authentic materials such as its real effectiveness on students’ improvement on reading comprehension Mihwa (1994) found that the level of reading comprehension of weak ESL learners was not affected

by the text, regardless of its type, authentic or non-authentic In addition, Kienbaum et al (1986) state that there are no significant differences in learners' performance: between learners using authentic materials and others who use traditional materials To weak students, authentic materials are considered as a bad tool in teaching reading skill Kilickaya (2004) believes that using authentic materials with weak learners frustrate and de-motivate them, because they lack the required skills and vocabulary to deal with presented text, successfully Guariento and Morley (2001) assert “At lower levels…the use of authentic texts may not only prevent learners from responding in meaningful ways, but can also lead them to feel frustrated, confused and… de-motivated” In a nutshell, there are still two tendencies coexisting, one supports for using authentic materials and one objects, but obviously the advantages outweigh the disadvantages so the teacher should consider the teaching materials to limit the drawbacks and intensify the benefits of this kind of texts

In the current research, the reliability of the study would be confirmed by doing experiment on lower-level students at Le Hoan High School in comparison with the previous ones conducted on college students The study was also done in a longer period of time With the findings of the study, English teachers would find it valuable to apply authentic materials in teaching reading skill to their students Besides, the author would give out some implications and suggestions for further study

Khoirul Farari Marwan (2013) conducted a research to check the improvement of students’ English reading comprehension through authentic materials To achieve the aim of the study, he used an action research The study only focused on a particular problem and a particular group

of students in a certain classroom It means that before implementing the research, the researcher needs to identify any problems really found in the classroom

There are some steps in the research including reconnaissance, planning, implementing and observing, and reflecting In the first step, problems were determined by conducting observations and interviews The researcher

collected data through observing teaching-learning process and interviewing

32 the students as participants The author also had discussions and interviews with the English teachers Besides, the data were collected from scores of reading tests, field notes and interview transcript After analyzing the data, the results gained showed that students’ reading comprehension was improved remarkably The students were also interested in reading and doing exercises with authentic materials because of the familiar number of words which they could meet in real life In conclusion, applying authentic material in teaching English reading skill could help students perform better

in their reading tests

Another research carried out by Siao-cing Guo (2012) tried to investigate the effects of extensive reading using authentic materials on students’ English proficiency particularly with regard to vocabulary and grammar

In the study, fifty fourth-year students from two intact classes at a year college in Taiwan were recruited as the participants These two classes were randomly assigned to be an experimental group and a control group Although all students in two groups received the same classroom instructions, only students in experimental group could get extensive reading

five-as extra activities outside of clfive-assroom The supplementary materials given

to experimental group was a set of 10 online reading materials related to the course topics during three months To check whether students of two groups were at similar level, the teacher let them take a pre-test After three months

of studying the participants took a post-test The test results collected were analyzed using SPSS to find out the relationship between extensive reading through authentic materials and vocabulary and grammar The findings demonstrated that extensive reading through authentic materials improved students’ vocabulary but not grammar In addition, the study also confirmed

positive attitudes of students and teachers toward this type of teaching materials

A part from these two particular studies, some others in Vietnam conducted by Tran (2010), Nguyen (2009) pointed out the improvement of students on reading and listening skill after authentic materials were applied into foreign language classes

In conclusion, there are thousands of earlier studies investigating the effects of authentic materials on students’ language acquisition Most of the findings showed positive effects It not only has great influence on a particular language skill but also on most aspects of student’s learning However, this effectiveness has been proved mainly on students in Foreign Language Major or college students Applying authentic materials has been strongly debated because of its complexity in vocabulary and structures especially for lower-level students For above reasons, it is recommended that using authentic materials as extra reading activities to teach reading skill

to tenth grade students at Le Hoan High School who often get the slowest range of marks in the entrance examination should be conducted

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

1 Methodology

1.1 The applied methodology in the research

The study was conducted with quasi-experimental method in order to know whether or not applying authentic materials can improve students’ reading comprehension at Le Hoan High School

1.2 Quasi-experimental design

Quasi-experimental research is the method which the researcher uses to evaluate the impact of an intervention on its target population but that do not use randomization It means that every subject does not have an equal chance of being assigned to experimental or control group of study subjects

on a random basis

Quasi-experimental designs are generally used to establish the causality (effects of independent variable on dependent variable) in situations where researchers are not able to randomly assign the subjects to groups or for various reasons no control group is for an experimental study

2 Research design

The current study was a quasi-experimental research conducted on 60 tenth-grade students at Le Hoan High School Because of being a quasi-experimental research, there was no random assignment to the subjects in the study Two variables included in the research were the use of authentic materials in teaching reading skill as the independent variable and the students’ reading comprehension achievement as the dependent variable The aim of the study was to assess the effects of the independent on the dependent variable In other words, the study tried to find out the influence

of authentic materials on students’ reading comprehension achievement The participants were divided into two groups, one was the experimental group and the other was the control group Both groups received the same

classroom instructions, the same teaching techniques in the morning obligatory lessons For learning activities carried in the study, the experimental group was given extra authentic texts as special treatment outside of classroom while the control group just did supplementary exercises for the reading lesson in course book The pre-test and post-test were carried out to both of groups The pre-test was to determine the reading ability of the two groups before applying authentic materials into teaching and the post-test was to check the effects of the treatment The data collected were analyzed with SPSS The mean score was compared at 0.05 level of significance to determine the effects of treatment or the effects of authentic materials

2.1 The subjects of the study

The subjects of the research were 60 tenth-grade students at Le Hoan High School Of these students, 30 students were assigned to the experimental group and the rest were to the control group All these 60 participants were the students who had studied in Grade 10 at Le Hoan High School for 5 months At Le Hoan High School the students were divided equally into classes in order to make sure that there is no big difference in students’ competence among classes It can be said that the students’ level was rather similar Moreover most of the students live in the villages near the school so they share a lot of common things in motivation, culture and living conditions

2.2 Selecting teaching materials

The teaching materials used as authentic reading materials to investigate its impact on students’ reading comprehension achievement were taken from the website www Breaking News English com The selected reading passage for each lesson has between 300 words and 450 words When selecting the reading passage, the researcher also thought of the topics of the

texts, the level of difficulty as well as the types of reading questions so that they were suitable with the students’ competence and the students would feel interested in working with them In order to know which topics would take more attention of students the teacher made a survey In the survey there are some familiar topics which the students learnt in course book such as home life, culture, education, jobs, nature and sports In addition, some other unfamiliar topics like news, discoveries, fashion and foods are also listed According to the results of the survey, most of female students like the reading texts related to fashion whereas most of male students like the topic about sports New discoveries became one of the most favourite topics to both of sexes because they quicken their curiosity Therefore, when choosing the reading texts, the teacher tried to find out the passages belonging to this topic

The sources of authentic materials that can be used in the classroom are infinite, but the most common are newspapers, magazines, TV programs, movies, songs and Internet For the authentic materials to be effective, they should not be chosen randomly There must be an aim in using them and the chosen materials should meet the objectives of the lesson Nuttal (1996) gives three main criteria when selecting authentic materials to be used in the

classroom: suitability of content, exploitability and readability

 Suitability of content can be considered the most important of the three,

in that the materials should interest the students, motivate the students

as well as be relevant to their needs

 Exploitability means that the materials facilitate the development of

language skills in order to help the students become competent and independent learners

 Readability is used to describe the combination of structural and lexical

difficulty of a text, as well as refer to the amount of new vocabulary

and any new grammatical forms presented It is important to assess the right linguistic level for the right students

Besides the three main criteria given, presentation also influences the

effectiveness of authentic materials Whether the text appears authentic or not, depends much on how it is presented to learners The authentic presentation, by using pictures, diagrams, photographs, etc helps put the text into the context This helps learners understand not only the meaning of the

text better but also how it would be exploited A more “attractive” text and

interesting ways of introducing it will appeal to learners, grab learners’ attention and motivate them to get engaged in the discovery and learning process

Other factors worth taking into consideration when selecting authentic materials for the classroom can include whether the text challenges the students’ intelligence without making unreasonable linguistic demands, the language reflects written or spoken usage, the language in the text is natural

or it has been distorted to include examples of particular teaching points or

to draw inferences in a particular context

Above all, selecting authentic materials are supposed to make learners want to read or listen for themselves, tell themselves something they do not know as well as to introduce new and relevant ideas to them Therefore, being aware of different types of authentic materials, what these materials can offer and how to incorporate them into classrooms is very important to every language teacher When selected and used properly in the language environment, authentic materials may have many benefits for both teachers and learners

There are 8 reading texts selected to teach for students in 8 weeks

Week 1: “Women do not get enough sleep”

Week 2: “Half of world population will be short-sighted”

Week 3: “Plants can make intelligent decisions”

Week 4: “Study shows there are two divorce seasons”

Week 5: “Cats are just as clever as dogs, says study

Week 6: “Astronauts' brains change shape during spaceflight”

Week 7: “Online gaming may improve school test scores”

Week 8: “Sitting may be dangerous for your health”

2.3 Teaching procedure

As mentioned above, the study was conducted in an 8-week period Because this research was conducted outside of the school schedule so the teacher asked the principle’s permission for doing reading lessons at two groups in the afternoons In the mornings, the participants in two groups took the obligatory lessons in course book as planned in their timetable In the obligatory lessons, the teaching techniques, amount of learning time as well as any other treatments were equally applied to both groups

The attendance of students in the experimental group and control group was voluntary Once a week the students in the control group just got some more extra exercises on the same topics they had learnt in the course book to consolidate vocabulary and practice doing reading exercises Meanwhile the researcher applied authentic reading materials chosen and designed to teach reading skill for the students in the experimental group Each week the researcher delivered students in experimental group an authentic reading passage Enclosed with the reading text, there are some reading exercises including a true or false exercise, a multiple choice exercise, and a question answering A part from these, the teachers also widened the amount of students’ vocabulary with two small vocabulary exercises such as synonym

matching and phrase matching The researcher believed that vocabulary played an important role in helping students to better their reading skill During the teaching procedure, the teacher also provided them some new words in the paragraph, some tips to deal with each type of reading question appearing in the reading task After that the students were required to read the text carefully and do the tasks following When students finished the task, the teacher would ask one by one to give out their answers and explained The further comment or explanation of the teacher to the common errors of students or to the important points of the lesson would be given out after each section of reading exercise In addition to, the teacher also tried to get students’ attention to the differences between each pair of words by giving them a small activity This activity is the reading text they have read but it is modified some pairs of words which the students often get confused about their usages The students would be asked to read the text to decide which word could be used and told the whole class why they chose it This task is considered as a supplementary activity to improve students’ awareness of the language usage Thanks to that, the ability of the students’ reading comprehension can be progressive

For homework, the teacher often asked students to summarize the reading passage by their own words The assignment would be submitted in the next lesson in class The aim of this task is to make students revise the content and vocabulary related to the topic of the reading passage

2.4 Measuring participants’ competence

2.4.1 Data collection instrument

The researcher conducted nonequivalent pre-test and post-test to measure students’ achievement after applying authentic materials in teaching reading skill

The pre-test and post-test include four parts with 40 questions: a synonym matching exercise, a true – false exercise, a multiple choice exercise and a question answering exercise These test items were designed to ensure its reliability The difficulty level of the tests is measured by asking the other class which was not the selected group to do it in an allowed time The class was taken to check the difficulty of the test consisting of 40 students and they were asked to do the test in 60 minutes The range of marks gained was from 3 to 8 However only 12of 40 students getting marks under 5, which account for 33.3 percentages This means that about two thirds of the students taking the test could get over medium marks The test results also revealed that most of students could not fulfill the questions about vocabulary

Designing tests is an important part of assessing students understanding

of course content and their level of competency in applying what they are learning Therefore, designing test should be done carefully to make sure some basic criterias such as consistency, completeness and repeatability

2.4.2 Procedures of data collection

Two selected groups had to take the pretest After that the experiment was conducted implementing authentic materials in teaching reading skill at the experimental class The students at this class would work with authentic text and then practice doing reading tasks under the instruction of the teacher At the control class, the teacher provided the students with supplementary exercises as a way to consolidate vocabulary and reading strategies to deal with reading tasks they had learnt in the obligatory lessons The students in both groups received one reading lesson per week in 8 weeks When this period of time came to an end, all students of these groups took the same post-test The result of the pretest and posttest recorded were analyzed by the researcher

2.4.3 Procedure of data analysis

The pretest and posttest done by the students were classified into two groups, one group includes the odd number and the other includes the even number The researchers had to calculate the reliability and difficulty index

of the test items The reliability index was measured by using Split half even technique and the difficulty index is calculated by using Pearson’s product moment correlation and Spearman-Brown formula If the test items ensure the reliability and difficulty index, the researcher does not have to redo the experiment and can continue analyzing the scores of the tests to evaluate the effectiveness of using authentic materials in language teaching

odd-To assess this value the teacher used independent sample T-test and paired sample T-test method to compare the results recorded in pre-test and post-test

CHAPTER III: RESULT ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

1 Result analysis

1.1 Pretest result analysis

The pretest scores play an important role in a quasi-experimental research Based on the results of two pretests, the researcher can evaluate the homogeneity of two groups before conducting the study Only when the investigator can assess homogeneity between the control group and experimental group, is the result of the research really valuable After marking the paper tests of the students, the teacher classified them into 4 groups including group of bad marks from 0 to under 5, group of average marks from 5 to under 6.5, group of fair mark from 6.5 to under 8 and group

of good marks from 8 to 10

The following bar chart shows the scores of two pre-tests

Chart 1: Pretest scores