Teaching and learning reading comprehension skills for grade 11 at hong quang high school difficulties and solutions

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG TEACHING AND LEARNING READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS FOR GRADE 11 AT HONG QUANG HIGH SCHOOL: DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS ( DẠY VÀ HỌC KỸ NĂNG ĐỌC HIỂU Ở LỚP 11 TRƯỜNG THPT HỒNG QUANG: KHÓ KHĂN VÀ GIẢI PHÁP) MA MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 Hanoi, 2011 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG TEACHING AND LEARNING READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS FOR GRADE 11 AT HONG QUANG HIGH SCHOOL: DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS ( DẠY VÀ HỌC KỸ NĂNG ĐỌC HIỂU Ở LỚP 11 TRƯỜNG THPT HỒNG QUANG: KHÓ KHĂN VÀ GIẢI PHÁP) MA MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 Supervisor: Đỗ Bá Quý (MEd.) Hanoi, 2011 iv Table of Contents Candidate's statement i ii Acknowledgements Abstract PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale Aims of the study Significance of the study Scope of the study Methods of the study Organization of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Literature review 1.1 Definitions of reading and reading comprehension 1.1.1 Reading 1.1.2 Reading comprehension 1.2 Types of reading 1.2.1 According to manner 1.2.1.1 Reading aloud 1.2.1.2 Silent reading 1.2.2 According to purpose 1.2.2.1 Skimming 1.2.2.2 Scanning 1.2.2.3 Intensive reading 1.2.2.4 Extensive reading 1.3 Teaching and learning reading comprehension skills 1.3.1 The importance of reading in foreign language learning 1.3.2 Factors in teaching and learning reading 1.3.2.1 Teacher’s role 1.3.2.2 Students’ role 1.3.2.3 The reading texts ii v 1.4 Organization of reading comprehension text 12 1.4.1 Pre-reading stage 12 1.4.2 While – reading stage 12 1.4.3 Post – reading stage 13 1.5 Summary 14 Chapter 2: Methodology 15 2.1 Participants 15 2.1.1 Teachers of English 15 2.1.2 The 11th -form students 15 2.2 Data collection instruments 15 2.2.1 The questionnaire for the students 15 2.2.2 The questionnaire for the teachers 15 2.3 Data collection procedures 16 Chapter 3: Data, data analysis and discussion 3.1 Data analysis 3.1.1 Questionnaire for the students 17 17 17 17 3.1.1.1 Students’ attitudes toward the importance of learning reading comprehension skill 3.1.1.2 Students’ purposes of reading 3.1.1.3 Students’ attitude toward class reading activities 3.1.1.4 Students’ difficulties when learning reading 3.1.1.5 Students’ responses to the techniques used by the teacher 3.1.1.6 Students’ ways of reading 3.1.1.7 Students’ effort for improving their reading comprehension skill 3.1.2 Questionnaire for the teachers 3.1.2.1 Teachers’ attitude toward the importance of teaching reading comprehension skills at school 3.1.2.2 Teachers’ attitude toward the importance of developing reading comprehension skills 18 20 21 22 23 23 24 24 25 3.1.2.3 Teachers’ using reading techniques in a reading lesson at Hong Quang High School 3.1.2.4 Teachers’ difficulties when teaching reading 3.1.2 Teachers’ suggested activities 3.1.2.6 Teachers’ organizing reading activities 3.1.2.7 Teachers’ activities to improve students’ reading comprehension skill 3.2 Discussion 3.2.1 The teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward the role of the teaching and learning of 29 30 30 31 vi reading 3.2.2 Difficulties the teachers and students meet when dealing with a reading lesson 32 32 3.3 The activities suggested to help the 11th-form students at Hong Quang High School improve their reading comprehension skill 32 3.3.1 Pre – reading stage 3.3.2 While – reading stage 33 3.3.3 Post – reading 33 3.3.4 Adjusting teaching time and efforts 35 3.3.5 Creating Interest and Enhancing Motivation 39 3.3.6 Techniques for enriching vocabulary 40 3.3.7 Techniques for improving students’ background knowledge 41 3.3.8 Recommending a Sample Lesson Plan 41 PART C : CONLUSION 42 Conclusions 42 2.Limitations and suggestions for further study 43 44 References Appendix A Sample Lesson Plan 44 44 PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale for the study English is considered as an international language over the world It plays an important role in the strong and rapid development of science and technology, politics, culture, and international relations in Vietnam The economic open-door policy pursued by the Government of Vietnam has increased the demand for using English The new policy has made English language learning and teaching more important than before In order to meet the social requirements, the Ministry of Education and Training has recently decided to introduce a new series of English textbook for grade 11 Many survey findings show that if students learn to read faster and with more understanding, they can many jobs that require reading with efficiency According to Carrell (1981, p.1), “reading is by far the most important of the four macro-skills, particularly in English as a second foreign language” However, teaching and learning reading skill at high schools is still far from satisfactory for various reasons Despite the teachers’ effort, the students’ motivation for intensive reading is low and the reading lesson is said to be a boring one Hong Quang High school, which was founded in 1955, is one of the high schools chosen to pilot the set of textbook During the piloting period the teachers have confronted a number of difficulties, one of which was identified by Hong et al (2006:18) as “students’ general lack of motivation and opportunities to practice communicating in the target language” The students are accustomed to passive learning, the teachers’ capacities are uneven, the size of classes is large and classrooms are equipped poorly According to Hoang et al, there are five main obstacles in reading: the habit of word-by-word reading; overemphasis on forms rather than meaning; excessive focus on details rather than main ideas; poor vocabulary and limited background knowledge The researcher needs to take a serious look at activities of teaching and learning of reading comprehension skill in general and reading activities in particular to help the Hong th Quang High School 11 – form students read more effectively This is the reason why I chose the topic: “Teaching and learning reading comprehension skills for grade 11 – Hong Quang High School: Difficulties and solutions” Aims the study This study aims at improving the quality of teaching and learning English reading comprehension skills for grade 11 in Hong Quang High School after finding difficulties To achieve this aim, the study has to find answers to the following questions: What are Hong Quang High School’s teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards the teaching and learning of reading? What difficulties the teachers and students face when dealing with a reading lesson? th What are the reading activities suggested to help 11 - grade students at Hong Quang High School improve their reading comprehension skills? Significance of the study This study has been carried out to search for a better and more effective way to develop students’ reading comprehension skills Its findings hopefully would help the 11th-form students find out the suitable way for improving their reading comprehension skills Regarding teachers, the study would raise their awareness concerning the topic and provide them with useful pedagogical suggestions in deciding to use the new teaching method to better develop their learners’ reading comprehension skills Finally, with regard to researchers, those who happen to share the same interest in the topic could certainly rely on this research to find reliable and useful information for their related studies in the future Scope of the study To improve reading comprehension skills for Hong Quang High School 11 th – form students, the teachers can make use of various techniques and a number of things should be done However, in this study, the author only intends to a brief overview of current situation of th teaching and learning reading comprehension skills in the 11 – form students of Hong Quang High School to suggest some reading activities that can be applied in teaching and learning reading comprehension skill so as to help the students to become effective readers Methods of the study To achieve the aims mentioned above, based on the results of two survey questionnaires, one for the students and the other for the teachers were employed to collect the data for the study These will be discussed in detail in chapter 2, methodology Organization of the study The study is divided into three parts: part A - Introduction, part B - development and part C conclusion Part A - introduction includes the rationale, aims and objectives, significance, scope, method and organization of the study Part B - development includes three chapters Chapter (Review of literature) provides the theoretical background of the study The focus of this chapter is definitions of reading, reading comprehension, classifications of reading, reading in second language teaching and learning Chapter (Methodology) describes the participants, data collection procedures and data collection instrument Chapter (Data, data analysis and discussion) offers some major findings, some suggestions for improving students’ reading comprehension skills and a sample work for a reading lesson of the 11th-form students Part C - conclusion includes conclusions, the limitations and suggestions for further study PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Literature review This chapter discusses different issues in the theories of reading in a foreign language Four major features will be presented here: definitions of reading, reading comprehension, kinds of reading, reading in second language teaching and learning 1.1 Definitions of reading and reading comprehension 1.1.1 Reading Reading is often referred to as the most important of the four language skills for EFL learners, as it enables students to gain exposure to the target language and receive valuable linguistic input to build up language proficiency (Erten & Razı, 2003) Reading is not just extracting meaning from a text but a process of connecting information in the text with the knowledge the reader brings to the act of reading It is seen as an active cognitive process in which the reader’s background knowledge plays a key role in the creation of meaning (Tierney and Pearson 1994) Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension The text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is So far reading has been defined differently by lots of scholars, however no single definition is acceptable to everyone Goodman (1971, p.135) stated that reading is “a psycholinguistics process by which the reader, language user, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display” In his opinion, readers not only learn how to read the text, to master grammatical structures…but also understand the content expressed in the text Having the same point with Goodman, William, E (1990, p.2) said that “reading is a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been written” According William, in reading process, there are also two parallel activities: looking and understanding Therefore, readers have to “encode” meanings of a word depend on the context in which it appears One more definition offered by Harmer (1989, p.153) showed us his opinion and two above authors have a lot of things in common “reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain The eyes receive messages and the brain then has to work out the significance of these messages” According to Richard and Thomas (1987:15), reading is best described as “ an understanding between the author and the reader Reading is much more than just pronouncing words correctly or simply knowing what the author intends; it is the process whereby the printed page stimulate ideas, experiences and responses that are unique to an individual In short, each person can have a different definition of reading and we cannot tell which is better because each of them focuses on one important matter of reading However, we find that there is a close relationship between reading and understanding Therefore, being a language teacher, we must understand the nature of reading thoroughly to help our students read effectively 1.1.2 Reading comprehension Reading comprehension skill plays a very important role in teaching and learning reading a foreign language It has the nature of communication, in which reading activity acts as a means of communication between the writer and the reader Reading comprehension results in the fact that when readers know which skills and strategies are appropriate for types of texts and understand how to apply them to accomplish reading purpose Swan (1975, p.1) stated that “A student is good at comprehension we mean that he can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information of a text with the minimum of understanding” It is obvious that the student can show his understanding only by doing some tasks such as summarizing the text, answering questions, making true or false etc According to Grellet (1981: 3):“ Reading comprehension or understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.” The author means that reading comprehension is an activity which aims at decoding the meaning of word combination in the text in the most efficient way To sum up, reading becomes meaningless without comprehension since only reading comprehension can appreciate how much readers understand the text Therefore, how to help students have effective reading comprehension methods is considered to be the most important part in reading teaching 1.2 Types of reading We read different texts in different ways According to the manner of reading, we have aloud reading and silent reading Depending on the purpose of reading, we can classify reading into skimming, scanning, intensive reading and extensive reading they have to list each word they have selected along with its pronunciation, part of speech, meaning, collocations and related forms Example: English 11, Unit 16: The wonders of the world, pp178 wonder /'wʌndə/ wonder (v): tự hỏi, lấy làm ngạc nhiên wonder (n): kỳ quan wonderful( adj): tuyệt vời, wonderfully(adv): cực kỳ, đáng khâm phục 3.3.7 Techniques for improving students’ background knowledge The teacher asks the students to search for information and read as much as possible about a specific topic of their favorites Then during a class contact, the teacher would start by sharing with the whole class some information that she had collected before asking her students for further supplementation Alternatively, teachers should subdivide a theme into several subtopics and assign each of them to different groups in the class Subsequently, each group of students should read at home to discuss or exchange the information with other groups in the following lesson 3.2.3.8 Recommending a Sample Lesson Plan A sample lesson plan was enclosed at the end of this thesis in an attempt to be an useful document for reference It may help teachers, to some extent, have the most suitable lesson plan for their specific students in specific contexts 43 PART C: CONLUSION In this last chapter, recapitulation of the study is provided with a brief description of the study as well as the limitations of the study and some suggestions for further study Summary of the study As reading, one of the receptive skills through which students can widen their knowledge of the target language more effectively than the others, it is important for the students to have good techniques in reading to become good readers In the case of this study, the teachers of reading at Hong Quang High School are supposed to be aware of many factors that affect students’ reading comprehension Among these, there are four main factors that should be taken into consideration for the 10th-form students: Students’ lack of background knowledge and world knowledge, students’ low motivation, students’ limited vocabulary and grammatical structures and their lack This study gives an analysis of the difficulties in reading and the sources of these difficulties as specifically, difficulties knowledge of perce the wo students’ difficulties in teachers understand their students in the process of reading acquisition The findings of the study indicate that there is a big gap between what the teachers have done to motivate the students what the students prefer The majority texts or for extensive reading They want strategies, how to of games the real and situation of study, an effort has been made to present some can be employed to help the 11th form students reading comprehension Limitations and suggestions for further study Due to the shortage of time and the lack of practical experience, all the issues of the teaching process cannot be covered as a whole, shortcomings were unavoidable 44 vis Firstly, the researcher only uses survey questionnaires to collect data on views of the teachers and the 11th-form students about reading difficulties and their needs in teaching and learning reading The number of the students participate in the questionnaires is only from classes (105 students), which may not be sufficient for the researcher to have precise judgments Secondly, not all the suggested techniques for teaching and learning reading are experimented properly, so the researcher can’t draw a conclusion of the effectiveness Therefore, the suggestions to improve reading comprehension skills for 11th-form students at Hong Quang High School may be subjective and uncompleted Finally, this thesis was carried out within the area of Hong Quang High School so the mentioned teaching methods may not be suitable to apply to other high schools because of learners’ differences in language proficiency and other social constraints Despite such limitations, I strongly believe that my research is successful to some extent Though this is just a small-scale study on the issue, it really provides some helpful suggestions for the teaching reading comprehension skills to the 11th-form students However, any further researches that employ supplementary instruments such as experimental research or observations and carry out in a longer period of time on a large scale can help to prove the above results more strongly and persuasively and can also help to avoid the subjective assessments from the researcher of this study 45 REFERENCES Abbot et al.( 1981) The teaching of English as an international language Collins Brown, H.Douglas (2001) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, Second Edition New York: A Pearson Education Company Carrel Et.al (1981) Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Doff, (1988) Teach English Cambridge University Press Gebhard, D.C Motivation: The responsibility of the teacher, ELT Journal Goodman, K (1988) The Reading Process in Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Grellet, Francoise Developing Reading Skills: A Practical Guide to Reading Comprehension Exercises Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Harmer, J (1989) The Practical Language Teaching Essex: Longman Group Ltd Lewis, M and Hill, J (1985) Practical technique for language teaching London: Commercial Color Press 10 Nuttall, Christine (1982) Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language Oxford: Macmilian Publishers Limited 11 Nuttal, Christine (1996) The virtuous circle of the good reader Oxford: Macmilian Publishers Limited 12 Richard,J.C and Thomas, R (1987) Being an effective reader Harper and Row publisher 13 Swans, M (1975) Practical English Usages Oxford: Oxford University Press 14 Tierney, R.J & Pearson P.D (1994) Learning to Learn from Text: A framework for Improving Classroom Practice Oxford: Macmilian Publishers Limited 15 Wood, J.(1984).Reading on reading University of Technology, Sydney 46 I Survey questionnaire for students This survey questionnaire is designed to support my study on „Teaching and learning reading comprehension skills for grade 11 – Hong Quang High School: Difficulties and solutions” Your assistance in completing this survey questionnaire is highly appreciated You can be sure that this questionnaire is for research only and that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data Please tick (V) and write the answer where necessary What is the role of reading comprehension skill? A Very important B As important as other language skills (listening, speaking, writing) C Not important as other language skills (listening, speaking, writing) D Not important at all What you often read the texts in English for? A To entertain B To gain information and improve knowledge C To enrich vocabulary and grammatical structures D To improve language skill E To all (A, B, C, D) Which of the following pre – reading activities does your teacher use in reading lesson? Pre – reading 1.Using games to introduce the task Using pre – reading questions 3.Pre – teaching vocabulary Explaining the instructions of the task Making students predict the content of the text Giving reading tasks to students Using visual aids to introduce the text Giving a brief introduction to the text How often you use the following activities in your reading lesson? II While – reading activities Matching T/F Questions and answers Finding synonyms and antonyms Reordering Sentence – completing Gap – filling Finding the topic sentences Finding equivalents 10 Multiple – choice How you deal with unfamiliar words or structures in the text? A Look them up in the dictionary B Ask teacher or friends for help C Guess their meanings by the context clues D Ignore them and continue reading After reading, what does your teacher often ask you to do? A Summarize the text B Discuss the texts C Do multiple – choice exercises, check students‟ understanding D Translate into Vietnamese E Do nothing What difficulties you often encounter when reading an English text? A Vocabulary and grammatical structures B Reading skills C Background knowledge Which of the following teaching reading techniques would you like your teacher to use? A Give various kinds of exercises to help us exploit the reading text B Give attractive introduction and clear aim of the reading text C Give more interesting activities D Help us guess new words based on the context III How does your teacher often ask you to reading comprehension exercises? A Work individually B Work in pairs C Work in groups 10 What should you to improve your reading comprehension skill? A Read a lot B Share experience with friends C Do all kinds of exercise D Others Thank you very much for your co - operation! IV Survey questionnaire for teachers This survey questionnaire is designed to support my study on “Teaching and learning reading comprehension skills for grade 11 – Hong Quang High School: Difficulties and solutions” Your assistance in completing this survey questionnaire is highly appreciated You can be sure that this questionnaire is for research only and that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data Please tick (V) and write the answer where necessary What you think about the role of reading comprehension skill? A Very important B As important as other language skills (listening, speaking, writing) C Not important as other language skills (listening, speaking, writing) D Not important at all What you think about the necessity to develop reading comprehension skill for the 11 form students? B Important C Not very important D Not important at all Which of the following pre – reading activities you use in reading lesson? Pre – reading Using games to introduce the text Using pre – reading questions Pre – teaching vocabulary Explaining the instructions of the tast Making students predict the content of the text Giving reading tasks to students Using visual aids to introduce the text th V Giving a brief introduction to the text How often you use the following activities in your reading teaching lesson? While – reading activities Matching T/F Questions and answers Finding synonyms and antonyms Reordering Sentence – completing Gap– filling Finding the topic sentences Finding equivalents 10 Multiple – choice How you often suggest students dealing with unfamiliar words or structures in the text? A Look them up in the dictionary B Ask the teacher or friends for help C Guess their meanings by the context clues D Ignore them and continue reading After reading, what you often ask your students to do? A Summarize the text B Discuss the texts C Do multiple – choice exercises, check students‟ understanding D Translate into Vietnamese E Do nothing What challenges you often have in teaching reading an English text? A The students‟ limitation of vocabulary and grammatical structures B The lack of the students‟ background knowledge C The limited time D The lack of the students‟ motivation VI Which of the following teaching reading techniques you often use? A Give various kinds of exercises to help students exploit the reading text B Give attractive introduction and clear aim of the reading text C Give more interesting activities D Help students guess new words based on the context E Others How you often ask your students to reading comprehension exercises? A Work individually B Work in pairs C Work in groups 10 What should we to improve our students‟ reading comprehension skill? A Create comfortable environment for students to exchange information before reading B Provide the students with certain key words C Suggest the students essential reading strategies needed for each kind of reading tasks D Explain clearly about the reading context Thank you very much for your co - operation! VII Period: 59 Date: 22/08/11 I Objectives: unit 10: nature in danger Lesson 1: Reading By the end of the period, Ss will be able to + Develop such micro- skills as scanning for specific ideas, and guess meaning in context + Use the information they have read to discuss the environmental destruction and conservation II Teaching aids: textbook, chalk and board III Teaching methods: integrated IV Anticipated problems: - Problems: Ss may need to be provided vocabulary related to nature so that they can complete various learning tasks - Solution: T should provide appropriate linguistic resources V Procedure: Teacher’s activities Warm- up: (5ms) - Ask Ss to look at the pictures of some animals in the textbook and answer the questions: What animals can you see in the pictures? Where they often live? - Lead into the new lesson Pre- reading: (8ms) - Call on student to read the information in the table aloud - Ask Ss to work in pairs and discuss the two questions - Call on some pairs to ask and answer in front of the class - Give comments and suggested answers.some wild/ rare animals such as cheetahs, pandas and Siberian tigers become small/ extinct The numbers of these animals have become small because they are killed for fur , food and skin - Introduce some new words in the reading text: + human race(n)= human beings (n) + have an influence on (v): + respect (v, n) + result in (v) VIII be in danger of (v) raise funds (v) - Look at the book and listen to the teacher prohibit (v) - Read the text silently, underline the words co-exist (v) and guess their meaning co- existence (n) While- reading: (25 ms) Task 1: - Explain the task - Have Ss read the text silently to find the - Work in pairs to the task words in the box and try to guess their - Explain the answers in front of the class meaning - Move around to give help if necessary * Suggested answers: - Ask Ss to work in pairs and fill in the extinct blanks with a suitable word - Call on some Ss to read and explain their protect answers in front of the class decreasing - Give comments and suggested answers - Read and explain the task - Read through the choices and try to understand them Task 2: - Do the task in pairs - Elicit the task from Ss - Have Ss read through all the choices and try to understand them - Some Ss explain their answers in front of - Ask Ss to work in pairs, read the reading the class text again and choose the best answer * Suggested answers: - Go around the class and help Ss if 1.C 2.B 3.A 4.C necessary - Call on some Ss to explain their answers - Look at the book and listen to the teacher in front of the class - Do the task in pairs - Give comments and suggested answers - Work in pairs, ask and answer the questions Task 3: - Clear the task and make sure Ss understand the questions - Some pairs ask and answer in front of the - Have Ss work in pairs, ask and class answer the questions - Give comments on their friends‟ answers - Go around and help Ss if necessary - Call on some pairs to ask and answer * Suggested answers: in front of the class Four ways that people are changing the - Ask other Ss to give comments on their world are: friend‟s answers - they are changing the environment by - Give comments and suggested answers building cities and villages - they are affecting the water supply by using water for industry and farming - They are changing the weather conditions by cutting down trees in the forests - They are destroying the air by adding + + + + + IX pollutants like smoke from factories and fumes from cars The serious consequences of people’s interference with the environment are : - Many kinds of rare animals are killed - the environment where these animals are living is badly destroyed - the numbers of rare animals are decreasing so rapidly that they are in danger of becoming extinct Many things have been done to protect endangered animals such as: - many organizations have been set up and money has been raised to save rare animals - thousands of national parks have been established - laws have been passed to prohibit killing endangered animals Post- reading: (5 ms) - Ask Ss to work in pairs and find out why some animals have become extinct - Go around and help Ss - Call on some pairs to present their answers in front of the class - Give comments and necessary correction Consolidation: (1m) - Summarize the main points of the lesson Homework: (1m) - Learn all the new words by heart - Answer the questions again in your notebooks - Prepare for the new lesson: Speaking - Work in pairs to find out why some animals have become extinct - Some pairs present the answers in front of the class - Listen to the teacher ... LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG TEACHING AND LEARNING READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS FOR GRADE 11 AT HONG QUANG HIGH SCHOOL: DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS. .. ? ?Teaching and learning reading comprehension skills for grade 11 – Hong Quang High School: Difficulties and solutions? ?? Aims the study This study aims at improving the quality of teaching and learning. .. statistics, teaching and learning reading comprehension skills at Hong Quang High School are not very effective and satisfactory The 11th-form students know something about reading skills, and