To improve reading comprehension skill for the grade 12 students by utilizing graphic organizers

THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING LE LOI HIGH SCHOOL  A RESEARCH PAPER FOR HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS OF ENGLISH TITLE: TO IMPROVE READING COMPREHENSION SKILL FOR GRADE 12 STUDENTS AT LE LOI HIGH SCHOOL BY UTILIZING GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS The writer: Phạm Thị Lý Position: Teacher Experience Initiative: English THO XUAN, 2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS Trang A INTRODUCTION I REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE RESEARCH II AIMS OF THE RESEARCH III SCOPE, OBJECT AND RESEARCHING METHOD The scope of the research The objectives of the research The method of the research B DEVELOPMENT PART1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND I Reading Comprehension The nature of reading comprehension The factors influencing reading comprehension 2.1 External factors 2.2 Internal factors Reading comprehension skill 3.1 Main idea 3.2 Explicit information 3.3 Vocabulary 3.4 Inference II Graphic Organizers Definition of Graphic Organizers Types of Graphic Organizers The Benefits of Graphic Organizers to reading comprehension Graphic Organizers in the Classroom Activities PART 2: PRACTICAL BACKGROUND The background of the study The problems faced by students and teacher in learning and teaching reading comprehension at Le Loi high school 2.1 The problems faced by the grade 12 students in learning reading comprehension 2.2 The problems faced by teachers in teaching reading comprehension The method employed in teaching reading comprehension skill to the grade 12 students at Thieu Hoa high school PART 3: THE SOLUTIONS The Purposes of the Solutions 4 4 5 5 6 6 6 9 10 10 10 10 11 11 12 12 The Time & the Participants of the Study Reading Materials The Procedures of the study Technique of Collecting Data Techniques of Analyzing Data Result and discussion Results of the study Discussion 2.1 The strength 2.2 The weaknesses C CONCLUSSION I Conclusion II Suggestion For English teachers For the students For the school 13 13 13 17 17 17 17 18 18 18 19 19 19 19 20 20 A INTRODUCTION I REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE RESEARCH It is widely recognized that reading is one of the most important skills for English as a foreign language students to master English is thought to be one of the decisive factors for people's success at the period of globalization In Vietnam, in recent years teaching methods have been more and more improved There have been a lot of activities organized in order to enhance the effectiveness and help students be more active and self-confident in learning English in general and reading skills in particular To students, nowadays, English is not only a core subject in the curriculum at school but also key to gain access to the information world that proves of great value to all of them Of four language skills, reading is believed to be the most important and also most difficult skill to students According to the time allocation, the school time for English lessons is limited with only periods a week, each lasts 45 minutes In an academic year, students complete 16 units, in which there are 16 reading lessons Through classroom observations at Le Loi schools, I find that in reading lesson, my students often have difficulties in identifying explicit information in a text, and comprehending the text as they lack of vocabulary; they are also unable to find main idea in a paragraph as well as to infer the meaning of the text Moreover, they feel scared when doing a long and difficult reading task because the reading lessons are not exciting enough to get students involved in their learning The reality poses a question to teachers about how to encourage students to learn and improve their reading skills so that they will be able to pass the English paper in the coming national examination in which reading skill acomplishes large proportion One of the possible solutions for such problems is using graphic organizers because these organizers can help students clarify and organize information into categories (main idea, supporting details, topic sentence, facts, opinion, etc), organize information in a paragraph for better understanding, construct meaning of difficult words and sentence dividing into lexis and understand the context by associating with prior knowledge Furthermore, graphic organizers are considered as wonderful techniques to make students actively engaged in their learning Because organizers include words, visual images, illustrative shapes, meaningful labels and logical displays, they are effective for a variety of students with different language levels and different multiple intelligences, especially for those with a visual modality preference For the aforementioned reasons, the author decided to choose the study entitled “ To improve reading comprehension skill for the grade 12 students by utilizing graphic organizers” II AIMS OF THE RESEARCH The study aimed at seeing whether the graphic organizers are beneficial for my students Specifically, the aims include: To identify whether and to what extent Graphic Organizers can improve grade 12 students’ reading comprehension skill in identifying the main idea, dealing with vocabulary, fact and opinion, and making inferences To describe the situation when Graphic Organizers are used in reading classes III SCOPE, OBJECT AND RESEARCHING METHOD The scope of the research Based on the background and identification of the theme, the study is limited on teaching reading comprehension to the students in grade 12th by using using graphic Organizers The research was conducted at my workplaceat Thieu Hoa high school, Thieu Hoa district, Thanh Hoa province The subject consists of 46 students who come from class 12A, school year 2015-2016 All of them are at the age of seventeenth years old They have to take every skill in each period; learning time is periods per week The object of the research The research study is organized into three parts as followed: Part provides basic information including the rationale, objectives, method, scope and design of the study Part reviews the related literature on reading comprehension presents the effectiveness of using graphic Organizers in teaching and learning reading comprehension as well as deals with some difficulties faced by teachers and students before applying the technique Part involves the result analysis as well as the discussion of the data and draws the conclusion, implication on the subject matter and suggestions for further research The method of the research When conducting this paper, I have employed these following methods - Collecting information about the theme - Practicing teaching - Observing and assessing - Exchanging experience with colleagues B DEVELOPMENT PART I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND I Reading Comprehension 1.The nature of reading comprehension Reading is an activity of inferring meaning out of written symbols with the collaborative work of cognitive behaviors and psycho-motor skills (Demirel, 1992) Reading is described as the process of perception in terms of written and published words with the help of senses, comprehension of these after building meaningful connections; intellectual and spiritual acquisition, active and communicative involvement with the written and published symbols, reception consisting of a number of perceptive and cognitive processes, an interpretation and also a reaction According to Alderson (1984), most scholars would suppose that reading is one of the most important skills for educational and professional success In highlighting the importance of reading comprehension Rivers (1981) stated that ― reading is the most important activity in any language class, not only as a source of information and pleasurable activity but also as a means of consolidating and extending one‘s which are knowledge of the language As Karakas (2002) pointed that the real objective of reading is fast and right grasp of the meaning Especially, reading at high speed along with full comprehension is a critical factor affecting the success of the students Students who can read at a high speed, understand what is being read, have a rich verbal repertoire and have a good master of the language, learn more easily and have higher rates of success The level of reading can be designated by asking questions about the reading text being read and evaluating the related answers in verbal or written way (Çalışkan, 2004) According to Eskey (1988) in advanced levels of second language the ability to read the written language at a reasonable rate and with good comprehension has long been recognized to be as oral skills if not more important From the theories above, it can be concluded that reading comprehension is a complex process in which the reader interacts with the text and employs his/her previous knowledge, experience and information to extract the significant information/important information, understand the intentions of the writer, and goes beyond what is written to guess at hidden, unstated or implied meaning on the text The Factors Influencing Reading Comprehension Dallman (1982: 165) points out the factors influencing the reading comprehension as follows: 2.1 External Factors: - Difficulty of material: difficult material that is beyond the students’ level is one of the major causes of lack of comprehension - Intelligence: a students’ ability to comprehend in reading is sometimes limited by his mental ability enabling him to carry The intelligence of the reader will influence the capacity of the reader in comprehending passage - Teacher’ s method: method of teaching that concentrate on the recognition of individual words without neglecting attention to meaning assists the students’ quality in comprehending the text 2.2 Internal Factors: - Motivation is one of the important factors of learners in reading comprehension - Self-esteem has important role in developing reading comprehension It is a human being personality that is active, highly confident Reading Comprehension Skill Spears (2000: xxvi) states there are eight important reading comprehension skills that help learners to read more systematically They are comprehending the main idea, determining the author’s purpose, distinguishing between the main idea and supporting details, making inference, distinguishing facts and opinion, analyzing structure, annotating, paraphrasing and summarizing The main concern of the research is about how to find the main idea, explicit information, vocabulary, and inference Therefore, I would like discussing further on those aspects: 3.1 Main Idea Spears (2000: 17) defines main idea as the author’s main point, a sentence, or perhaps two that state what the whole thing is about The main idea may take place in the beginning of the paragraph, the end of the paragraph, combination between the beginning and the end of the paragraph, or even omitted from the entire paragraph 3.2 Explicit information Spears (2000: 12) defines explicit information is a single piece of information or fact about something 3.3 Vocabulary According to Schwartz and Raphael (1985: 39) vocabulary is the knowledge of words and words meaning Knowledge of words is critical to reading comprehension, because it support to comprehension Students are expected to learn the meaning of new words They acquire these words by reading books, magazine, newspaper or hearing them read aloud from books by other 3.4 Inference McNeil (1992: 77) defines inference as the derivation of some idea that is not directly stated To infer, Caroll in McNeil suggests that there are three important ways to infer They are from subtleties of verbal expression, reasoning, making involvement of the reader’s experience to determine how the character in the text might feel II Graphic Organizers Definition of Graphic Organizers There are many definitions about graphic organizers Among them are from Bromley et al, Sousa, and Zwiers Bromley, et al (1995:7) define graphic organizer as a visual representation of knowledge It is a way of structuring information, of arranging important information aspects of a concept or topic into a pattern using label Besides, Sousa (2005:192) states that graphic organizers as valuable tool for organizing and representing knowledge and for illustrating relationship between concepts In addition, Herley in Zwiers (2004:17) states that graphic organizers are drawings that use geometric shapes or tables to show connections between pieces of information Types of Graphic Organizers Graphic organizers come in many different forms, each one best suited to organizing a particular type of information Mcgill, Murphy, and Freeman (2009) state that graphic organizers are generally labeled as conceptual, hierarchical, cyclical, and sequential The first, conceptual organizers help students show their learning or knowledge of a central idea Concept maps, KWL charts, and Venn diagrams are only a few conceptual graphic organizers KWL charts will help the student organize his or her prior knowledge and the information that he or she wants to learn before new learning begins Then, after learning has taken place the student will chart what he or she has learned Venn diagrams are used to compare and contrast two objects, topics, characters, etc Second, a hierarchical organizer is used when a student needs to break down broad concept into sub concepts Some of these organizers include the branching diagram, classifying chart, and topic/subtopic web Students could use this type of graphic organizer to explain the food chain Third, the student will use a sequential graphic organizer when he or she needs to explain the sequence of events Storyboards, T-charts, and cause and effect organizers are all sequential This type of organizer could be used when telling the beginning, middle, and end of a story The last, there are times when it would be best to use a cyclical organizer These organizers may be better known as the circle organizer or the circle diagram These could be used to show life cycles or the water cycle In Figures to 5, examples of some graphic organizers that are used for interpreting a text with a specific objective are shown Figure 1.1 is a graphic organizer that could be used to classify the author’s purpose in a reading comprehension passage This could be further developed based on the requirements for different passages Figure is a graphic organizer that could be used to classify the main idea and supporting details in a passage Figure & are graphic organizers that could be used for classifying information in a passage as fact or opinion and comparison or contrasting respectively Finger is used to remember the event easily Figure Author’s purpose idea Figure Main Idea &Main Supporting Details Supporting detail Supporting detail Supporting detail ……………………… ……………………… ……………………… ……………………… ………………… ………………………… … ……… … …………………… … …………… ………… ………………………… ………………………… ………………… …… ………………………… ………………………… ………………… …… Figure Fact and Opinion Figure Compare and Contrast Figure Remember event An event map is another great tool that focuses on one event, such as a major conflict The chart asks students to follow the W+H model of thought (who, what, when, where, why, how) 10 The Benefits of Graphic Organizers to reading comprehension In terms of reading comprehension, graphic organizers can be effectively used in all lessons for students of all ages to check not only students’ understanding but also to motivate and enhance their thinking skills Krasnic (2011, p.24) claims that students are able to clear their thoughts and sharpen their thinking by organizing and connecting key concepts related to what they are reading from the text This process can help the students to improve their critical thinking, a kind of cognitive activity that appears in many categories of the cognitive process dimension Graphic organizers are wonderful tools to get students actively engaged in their learning Because these visual representations include words, images and symbolic patterns such as conceptual, hierarchical, cyclical and sequential, they seem to be effective with students with verbal, visual and logical learning styles Students who are good at their merits feel easier to demonstrate their reading understanding by using graphic organizers instead of answering comprehension questions in verbal languages Reading researchers point out that in an English reading lesson, if the teacher uses graphic organizers that appropriately go with the organization of the passage being read, he or she will enhance and facilitate student understanding and develop their full potentials For example, if the text is presented in a sequential manner, a list or a timeline will be best, or if written in a compare/contrast mode, a 2-column chart or Venn diagram might be better If the reading passage is related to a central theme and followed by paragraphs that have a relationship to the controlling point, a mind map or a network tree should be used to brainstorm the topic and become a great strategy for students With the mentioned benefits, teachers should use graphic organizers to help students prepare themselves for reading, to explore the text with a deeper understanding, to externalize their thinking, and to promote effective learning Appropriately use, graphical organizer instructions can significantly reduce the amount of time required to achieve the objective of a reading lesson for both the teacher and learners However, the appropriate choice of organizers for the reading lesson depends on the teacher’s knowledge of the topic presented in the passage, knowledge of pedagogical content that requires the teacher to plan and conduct an effective lesson with a supportive learning environment, and knowledge of language learners in order to develop students’ creativity and critical thinking – the essential 21st Century skills Graphic Organizers in the Classroom Activities In 1992, Jay McTighe in his book, Graphic Organizers: Collaborative Links to Better Thinking outlined three main ways teachers may use graphic organizers in their teaching and a number of ways that students can use them to aid their learning process In the reading process, graphic organizers can be used at three levels: Before instruction, during instruction and after instruction Before instruction, graphic organizers are used to understand the level of 11 the students in terms of the content Pre- reading graphic organizers are constructed by teachers to help structure the lesson and material to be learned, pre-teaching vocabulary and activate prior knowledge This strategy aims to prepare learners to begin thinking about the material they will be reading During instruction, graphic organizers allow students to approach the content cognitively because they assist thinking It also allows students to construct maps that are appropriate to their learning styles After instruction, they help students as a summarization tool or technique and they help the students to understand their improvement in terms of understanding passage If a student can connect prior knowledge with what was learned and identify relationships between those ideas, it means graphic organizers have successfully assisted them in the course of their learning process Graphic organizers in this research means any graphic displays that help the readers obtain the meaning of the text in term of organizing and linking ideas in purpose of finding main idea, explicit and implicit information PART 2: PRACTICAL BACKGROUND The background of the study I have responsibility for teaching English to class 12A2, at Le Loi high school, which is located in Tho Xuan town, Tho Xuan district, Thanh Hoa province In this school year 2018-2019 The participants of the study were 45 students in class 12A2 from every corner of Tho Xuan district, by this I mean they are both from town and rural areas 40 of them are females and they are 17 years old They have been learning English for more than years According to their school report when they were at grade 11 of them were ranked as very good, 11 as good, 19 as average, and 10 as poor at using English The problems faced by students and teacher in learning and teaching reading comprehension skill at Le Loi high school 2.1 The difficulties faced by the grade 12 students in learning reading comprehension It is clear that the students in my school have encountered many difficulties in learning reading comprehension and they are often bad at it In the first place, the majority of the students have trouble with reading lessons because of their low level of English proficiency Their vocabulary and sentence structures are poor Besides, their low background knowledge also makes them feel stressed when reading Many of the students said they found it hard to identify explicit information in a text; to comprehend the text; and they were also unable to find main idea in a paragraph, or to infer the meaning of the text 12 In reading process, as a matter of fact, most EFL students mentally translate the content into their first language Students have to struggle to respond to the comprehension questions through the time-consuming process of thinking in their first language and then translate it into English but the problem is that students cannot verify the accuracy of their translation of the meaning of the passage into their mother tongue What is more, students often read a passage in bits and pieces and fail to connect the ideas This results in fragmentary understanding Next, they fail to follow the schemata while reading They fail to identify the main idea of a passage and how it is developed in the body paragraphs In addition, their low motivation is also a problem The students not highly asses their teachers’ assistance They find their teachers’ feedbacks are not comprehensive and their teachers’ instructions are not adequate 2.2 The difficulties faced by teachers in teaching reading comprehension for the grade 12 students Not only the students but also the teachers cope with numerous problems when teaching reading comprehension at my school The first difficulty I and my colleagues are coping with is the low English level of the students Our students often lack vocabularies and have difficulties in understanding the text The students’ low motivation and low background knowledge are also other problems encountered by the teachers The second difficulty is the problem of large and multilevel classes In multilevel classes, we face difficulties in shortening a big gap between our students In the same class, some students who are good at English are active while many others are de- motivated In addition, English classes at Le Loi high school are very large There are 45 students in a class Hence, it is difficult for the teachers to give each of the students individual attention and make sure who is on task and who is off task For the next difficulty, teaching equipment and reference materials are important in the teaching process; however, the teaching condition in my school is not good Teaching aids such as pictures, sub- board are not equipped Teachers often use only textbook, chalk and board in their lessons To make our lessons more interesting, we had to create teaching aids by ourselves The method employed in teaching and learning reading comprehension skill to grade 12 students at Le Loi high school In reading lesson, students were trained in the traditional ways like making the students read the passage again and again to understand the content of the text and answer the comprehension questions While comprehending a passage, most EFL students mentally translate the content into their first language Students may even respond to the comprehension questions through the time-consuming process of thinking in their first language and then translate it into English Students cannot verify the accuracy of their translation of the meaning of the passage into their mother tongue 13 It can see that students’ major reading problem arising when they are so worried about understanding every single word of a text they are reading that they not get the general idea from the passage My students may also struggle in other areas while comprehending a passage Firstly, while they may be good at recognizing and pronouncing the words, they struggle to understand the central theme of the passage They read a passage in bits and pieces and fail to connect the ideas This results in fragmentary understanding Next, they fail to follow the schemata while reading They fail to identify the main idea of a passage and how it is developed in the body paragraphs With the desire of helping my students with reading comprehension skill, I conducted this study within two months The data collected in my teaching practice shows that using graphic organizers gives students alternatives to these inefficient methods of reading or comprehending a passage In contrast to their usual approach to reading or comprehending a passage, they classify the content of the passage and then try to decode it This paper explores how classifying a reading passage using graphic organizers has shown better results compared with reading a passage without using these organizers Using a graphic organizer, they learn the skill of classifying information of a passage under a schema Once they master this skill, they can divide the passage into different lexias such as main idea, supporting details, topic sentences, data, fact, opinion, etc They elevate themselves from a stage of mere fragmentation to a stage of logical classification of information This leads to a holistic comprehension of the passage, which in turn helps students decode the passage for its logical and linguistic signals PART 3: THE SOLUTIONS The Purposes of the Solutions Based on all the facts above, students need to have sufficient strategy to be successful in reading comprehension In the previous explanation, students have some difficulties in reading comprehension such as identifying the main idea, finding the supporting details, dealing with vocabulary, and making inferences In this case, graphic organizers are selected as the effective teaching method that can provide the bridge from the abstract concepts of the text to more visible ideas that ease the reader getting the intended meaning Specific aims of using graphic organizers in teaching reading comprehension listed as following: - Clarify and organize information into categories (main idea, supporting details, topic sentence, facts, opinion, etc) - Organize information in a paragraph for better understanding - Construct meaning of difficult words and sentence dividing into lexes - Understand the context by associating with prior knowledge - Identify conceptual and perceptual errors that may occur in the course of reading a passage 14 Furthermore, the use of graphic organizers has yielded promising results in: promoting learning performance; improving learning and thinking skills; and increasing learning attitudes From the characteristics of graphic organizers above, it is believed that graphic organizers can improve students’ reading comprehension in term of finding explicit information, vocabulary, main idea and inference The Time & The Participants of The Study This study was carried out at my workplace - Le Loi high school - a school in Tho Xuan district, Thanh Hoa province in academic year 2018-2019 The study lasted for two months The participants of the study were 45 students from class 12A2 from every corner of Tho Xuan district, by this I mean they are both from town and rural areas 40 of them are females and they are 17 years old They have been learning English for more than years According to their school report when they were at grade 11, of them were ranked as very good, as good, 20 as average, and 12 as poor at using English In my study, students from class 12A2 were trained with using graphic organizers in reading lessons to decode information from reading passages Reading Materials The reading materials used in the present study consisted of selected texts based on the themes in English textbook 12, Education Publishing House This reader consisted of both expository and narrative texts for high school students The selection of the reading material was based on the following parameters: (a) Complexity level (b) Variety of topics and (c) Lexical count The Procedures of the study The Procedures of the study are as follows: Step 1: Problem Identification Problem identification is conducted by identifying problems of the students’ reading comprehension In this case, the researcher makes use of Pre test (Appendix 1) A pre test was administered to students to ascertain the standard of the students in reading comprehension The pre-test scores of students were recorded The test material was designed based on the scope of the study It was made up of one passage, totaling 10 questions which can be classified into five types of reading questions: (1) Identifying the main idea, (2) finding the supporting details, (3) understanding vocabulary, (4) distinguishing fact from opinion and (5) making inferences Out of 10 questions, there were main idea questions, supporting detail questions, vocabulary questions, fact and opinion questions and inference questions Each question was worth mark and the sum total of the test was 10 15 Before administering the pre-test, it was important for the researcher to examine the proficiency level of the students The result of the test showed the Students’ reading comprehension problems at my school as following - Students had difficulty to identify explicit information of the text - Students had difficulty to comprehend the text as they lack of vocabulary - Students were unable to find main idea in paragraph - Students had difficulty to infer the meaning of the text Step 2: Analyzing the causes Knowing that reading comprehension was still difficult for the students, I tried to know what caused their difficulties The difficulties of reading comprehension were based on two aspects They were from teacher and the students From the teacher’s aspect, I saw that the process of teaching learning was not inspiring It could be seen the teacher seldom gave students motivation during the class, hence students felt bored with the teaching technique Meanwhile, from the students’ aspect, I saw that the students’ vocabulary mastery was poor Besides, the students have lack of motivation Furthermore students got difficulties in reading comprehension as the material given by the teacher was difficult To overcome the problems above, I would like to - Use selected text suited with their daily life experience and their interest during the research as it easier to understand by the students - Use graphic organizers to improve students’ reading comprehension skill Step 3: Planning After identifying the problems and its causes, I make a plan about what kind of action that will be carried out Then, I prepare everything dealing with the research requirements such as preparing the material, making lesson plan, preparing observation sheets to record students’ activities, and preparing teaching aids and instrument Here is an example of the lesson plan I made to use in my study Lesson plan is a proposal for actions in teaching activities Knowing that case, I designed the lesson plan as follows: a)General Instructional Objectives: The students will be able to comprehend the text b) Specific Instructional Process · - The students are able to find explicit information in the text - The students are able to comprehend the text - The students are able to find main idea in a paragraph of the text - The students are able to infer the meaning of the text c) Indicator: Using conflict dissection graphic organizer, students are able to; - Find explicit information in a text - Find word meaning in a text 16 - Find main idea in a paragraph - Inferring the meaning of the text d) Time: week 15th, school year 2018-2019 e) Materials The text about “tobacco smoking” Sample Paragraph The well established dangerous effects of tobacco smoking such as lung cancer, heart disease, and emphysema-bronchitis are familiar to many of us Cigarette smoking has probably caused more bodily harm than all the wars of recorded history combined The yearly death rate of lung cancer alone is over 80,000 in the United States The major cause of lung cancer is cigarette smoking It has been estimated that during the past ten years cigarette smoking was a causative factor in the deaths of at least million Americans and countless numbers of people in other countries where cigarette smoking is commonplace Statistics taken in 1992 determined that 20% of all deaths in the world occur due to smoking Smoking is still on the rise in the developing world but falling in developed nations About 15 billion cigarettes are sold daily – or 10 million every minute according to 2002 WHO data The rate of smoking amongst women and people from Asian countries has risen steadily in recent years It has not merely reached epidemic proportions; it has become a scourge, a health disaster unparalleled in the history of the world f) Teaching Learning Process * The Opening: warm up * Pre-reading activities In this stage, the teacher introduced the students about graphic organizers (GO) The teacher told the students that graphic organizer was kind of technique which was employed to improve students’ reading comprehension Then, the teacher explained about GO strength, GO types and Go selection for explicit information, vocabulary, main idea and inference Next, the teacher gave the students’ model how to apply one certain kind of graphic organizer During modeling, the teacher instructed the students to note down teacher’s explanation In modeling, first, the teacher displayed the graphic organizer Second, the teacher explained some words in its graphic organizer: main idea supporting idea, fact and writer’s opinion, etc Next, the teacher identified the elements of the passage After finding the elements of passage, then, the teacher put the elements into the blank graphic organizer After that, the teacher inferred the practical value which was implicitly stated in the passage The last, the teacher answered all the questions in terms of and the passage and graphic organizer employed * During-reading activities During reading, the teacher distributed the text entitled “water” and the blank graphic organizer After distributing the text and the blank graphic organizer, the teacher then introduce important vocabularies to the students 17 After that, the teacher instructed the students to read the text silently Within reading, the students checked their prior knowledge with the information provided in the text Then, the teacher asked the students to fill the Graphic Organizer When the students did the teacher’s instruction, the teacher observed the students’ activity After completing the graphic organizer, then the teacher asked the students to share it together * Post-reading activities In this stage, the teacher asked the students about the content of the passage It is done to know whether the students understand the text or not Besides that, it trained the students’ bravery in answering the questions After that, teacher showed the best graphic organizer to student and asked them to take notes as a model *Closing: Teacher summarized the main points in the lesson, assigned home work g) Tool/Media: internet- based computer, markers, large sheet of paper, etc Step 4: Acting In this stage, the researcher observed the action by making filed note of instructional activity intended to know the class situation, what happened to students and the instructional activities when graphic organizer was applied Here, the implementation of the action was planned: the instructional activity in the classroom was conducted based on lesson plan Step 5: Observing In this stage, I observed and monitored the activities in the classroom during and after teaching learning process by making notes of students’ progress on reading comprehension Step 6: Reflecting 18 After carrying out teaching and learning activity using graphic organizers, I recited the occurrences in the classroom as the effect of the action I and my colleagues evaluated the process and the result of the implementation of graphic organizers in teaching reading comprehension and the improvement of students’ performances Step 7: Revising the plan The revision is carried out according to the weaknesses found in the previous lessons By revising the plan, it is hoped that the rest of the problems can be handled in the following lessons Technique of Collecting Data In data collecting, I involved quantitative data The quantitative data are gained from tests: pre- and post test It is conducted in order that I get the data pertaining to whether or not there is significant improvement on students’ reading comprehension after being introduced with graphic organizers technique Techniques of Analyzing Data In analyzing quantitative data, I used descriptive statistics analysis It is used to find percentage of students’ achievement The steps in analyzing quantitative data are as follows: The quantitative data in numbers form gotten from a Checking the students’ answer on the written test that is carried out the implementation of cycles whether they are right or wrong b Computing the students’ correct answers c Calculating the students’ score on written test I calculated the percentage of the correct answers of each student by using percentage correction The percentage is used to measure the students’ reading comprehension Result and discussion Results of the study To know the students’ improvement, I gave the students post test after applying GO and compared the score of the previous condition and those of the post test There were two sets of scores that I would like to compare between the previous condition and the post test There were the reading comprehension score of each and the score of specific skill in reading comprehension measured in this research The complete comparisons of reading comprehension score could be described in the following table Items of reading questions Identifying the main idea Finding the supporting details Dealing with vocabulary Dealing with Fact and opinion Making Inferences Before GO applied After GO applied 51% 77% 69% 82% 65% 89% 58% 79% 41% 78% Based on the table above, it can be concluded that there was improvement between students’ reading comprehension scores in preliminary research and the 19 post test In identifying the main idea the pretest score is 51% and 77% in the post test with an increment of 26% In finding the supporting details, the score rises by 13% from 69% in the pretest to 82% in the post-test For the third type of question (vocabulary), there was a considerable increase of 24%, 65% and 89% in the pre-test and in the post-test respectively For fact and opinion questions the score of pre-test is 58% and 79% in the post test with an increment of 21% For questions pertaining to making inferences, the improvement was also significant The data gave the score as 41% in the pre-test and 78% in the post-test Hence, we can conclude that using graphic organizers while reading helps the students very much to comprehend a passage and to improve students’ reading comprehension performance Discussion Based on the result of the study, I could identify some strengths and weaknesses of the implementation of graphic organizer in teaching reading comprehension 2.1 The strength - The students became more interested and motivated to join the class as they were introduced a new technique that is GO - The students were familiar with the text, so it encouraged the students to activate their background knowledge By activating their background knowledge, the students understood the text well - Graphic organizers were effective to solve the students’ difficulties on reading comprehension, such as explicit information, vocabulary, main idea, and inference - The researcher and the teacher actively discussed before and after meeting Together, they made reflection and evaluation of teaching-learning process By so doing, it is hoped that it can improve teaching proficiency 2.2.The weaknesses A number of limitations should be stated related to this study - First of all, this sample study was formed by the English language learners at pre intermediate level-there is a need for more studies to be formed by other learners from different levels - Second, because of the rigid laws existing in schools, the time allocation for the experiment was not that much satisfactory - Third, some questioners regarding the attitudes of learners and instructors towards graphic organizers are needed C CONCLUSSION I Conclusion 20 The success of this study is giving students opportunities to express their understanding of the reading orally, allow them to learn from each other and to integrate the content of reading material into their knowledge base Ideally it promotes the notion of an exchange of information, helps to break down traditional teacher-centredness, and begins to establish a variety of interaction patterns in the classroom The implementations of graphic organizers in teaching reading improve students’ reading comprehension The improvements of students’ reading comprehension are as follows: Students are able to find explicit information of the text Here, the students are trained to identify the information in a text By doing that, the students are able to find information which is explicitly stated in a text Students are able to find the word meaning in a text Their skills improved as they were trained to reconstruct passage of the text into the graphic organizers Students are able to find main idea in a paragraph of the text Their skills improved during the process of teaching learning using graphic organizers They were trained to identify a problem and solution arising in a text By doing so, the students are able to find main idea in a paragraph of the text Students are able to infer the meaning of the text Their skills improved as they were trained to take a moral message or moral value of the text The improvement can also be concluded from their scores Before the use of graphic organizers their reading score was low but after the implementation of graphic organizers, the score was much higher It can be concluded that there is improvement on the students reading comprehension skills as the scores are gradually up from pre-research to the post test II Suggestion Based on the result of the study, teaching reading using graphic organizers as a newly-develop technique is suitable technique to improve students’ reading comprehension the researcher could give suggestions for betterment of students’ reading comprehension as follows To implement graphic organizers, the teacher needs some steps Here are the steps for implementing graphic organizers: - Modeling, - Guided practice, - Independent application For English teachers - For the sake of improvement of students’ reading comprehension, English teachers are suggested to: - Select and present material according to the students’ level and need - Check readability of the text that is going to be applied for teaching - Encourage students to learn reading comprehension not only in the classroom but also outside the classroom to make them more familiar with different written English texts 21 - Select the appropriate graphic organizers for classroom usage - Explain graphic organizers explicitly when teachers gave modeling phase For the students For the sake of successful learning of reading comprehension, students are suggested to: - Develop reading comprehension ability through forming reading habit to enrich students’ vocabulary mastery - Use actively all vocabularies that have been learned into different skills - Train a lot in reading using different genre of the texts - Monitor the comprehension by generating questions and explain back anything that has been learned - Don’t be shy to ask or consult a teacher or other related expert when having difficulty For the school For the effectiveness of the teaching and learning process, the school is suggested to: - Introduce graphic organizers among teachers in school - Implement various graphic organizers to teach English especially reading comprehension - Provide adequate facilities to support the success of the teaching learning process Thanh Hoa, 25th May in 2019 I hereby acknowledge that this study is mine The date and findings discussed in the thesis are true, used with permission from associates and have not been published elsewhere Phạm Thị Lý 22 REFERENCES Bromley, K., Irwin-DeVitis, L & Modlo, M (1999) 50 graphic organizers for reading, writing & more: Reproducible templates, student samples, and easy strategies to support every learner New York: Scholastic Professional Books Irwin-DeVitis, L and Pease, D (1995) Using graphic organizers for learning and assessment in middle level classrooms Middle School Journal, 26 (5), 5764 Langford, P A., Rizzo, S K., & Roth, J M (2003) Improving student comprehension in content areas through the use of reading strategies Illinois: M.A Research Project, Saint Xavier University and Skylight Professional Development (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No ED478769.) Chi Fan, Y (2010) The Effect of Comprehension Strategy Instruction on EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension Asian Social Science, 6(8), 19-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ass.v6n8P19 Griffin, C C., & Tulbert, B L (1995) The Effects of Graphic Organizers on Students’ Comprehension and Recall of Expository Text: A review of the Research and Implication of Practice Reading and Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 11(1) http://dx.doi.org/0.1080/1057356950110106 Anderson, N (1999) Exploring second language reading: issues and strategies Heinle & Heinle 53-56 Hoang Van Van, 2006, English textbook 12, Education Publishing House 23 24 ... reasons, the author decided to choose the study entitled “ To improve reading comprehension skill for the grade 12 students by utilizing graphic organizers II AIMS OF THE RESEARCH The study... whether the graphic organizers are beneficial for my students Specifically, the aims include: To identify whether and to what extent Graphic Organizers can improve grade 12 students reading comprehension. .. organizer, then the teacher asked the students to share it together * Post -reading activities In this stage, the teacher asked the students about the content of the passage It is done to know whether the