An investigation into english reading strategies employed by ethnic minority junior first-year english major students at tay bac university

An investigation into english reading strategies employed by ethnic minority junior first-year english major students at tay bac university

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1.1 Rationale

Internationally, within the field of education over the last few decades a gradual butsignificant shift has taken place, resulting in less emphasis on teachers and teaching andgreater stress on learners and learning This change has been reflected in various ways inlanguage education Teaching English as a second or foreign language (TESL/TEFL) has alsochanged tremendously Most significantly, the traditional teacher-centred approach has beenreplaced with the learner-centred one, which reflects a desire to explore ways of makingteaching responsive to learner needs and interests and allowing learners to play a fuller, moreactive and participatory role in the day-to-day teaching and learning processes Inherent in thisapproach is a shift in the responsibilities of both teachers and students in the foreign languageclassroom No longer does the teacher act as the centre of all instruction, controlling everyaspect of the learning process Learners themselves now, more than ever, are sharing theresponsibility for successful language acquisition and, in doing so, are becoming lessdependant on the language teacher for meeting their own individual language learning needs.By giving students more responsibility for their own language development, languageprograms are inviting learners to become more autonomous, to diagnose some of their ownlearning strengths and weaknesses and to sift-direct the process of language development.

Then, for all L2 teachers who aim to develop their students' communicativecompetence and language learning, an understanding of language learning strategies is crucial.As Oxford (1990) puts it, language learning strategies" are specially important for languagelearning because they are tools for active, self-directed involvement, which is essential fordeveloping communicative competence" (p.1) According to Nunan (1999), learner-centeredness does not mean that teachers should devaluating their own professional roles orhandling their duties and responsibility to the learner Learner-centered instruction "is a matterof educating learners so that they can gradually assume greater responsibility for their ownlearning" (Nunan, 1999: 12) and research suggests that training students to use languagelearning strategies can help them become better language learners In the field of secondlanguage acquisition, focus has been shifted away from finding perfect teaching

methodologies to investigating why some learners are very successful in their languagelearning while others are not although they have made as much effort learning the language.Several studies that have been carried out by Oxford (1990), O'Malley and Chamot (1990),Nunan (1991), Rubin and Thompson (1994) and Cohen (1998) have shown that one of themost important factors that distinguish successful learners from unsuccessful ones is theirlearning strategies In other words, successful learners do use some effective learningstrategies to deal with problems that emerge during their learning process while unsuccessfulones employ inappropriate or ineffective strategies resulting in their failure in their languagelearning This finding has provoked interest among researchers and teachers in identifyinglearning strategies employed by good language learners with a view to training bad learners touse such effective learning strategies.

In Vietnam, learning strategies have also become a topic of interest in recent yearswhen the concepts of "self-learning" and "life-long learning" have been familiar to the ears ofboth Vietnamese teachers and learners Several studies into this field have been conductedwith different type of learners to find out particular strategies employed by effective andineffective learners such as Huyen Tran study (2004) on vocabulary learning strategies usedby students of English at Quy Nhon University or Mai Duong's (2005) on writing strategiesemployed by first-year students at Hanoi National University or Nguyen Thi Thu Ha's (2006)on reading strategies employed by second-year bridge and road students at the University ofTransport and Communications or Mai Van Binh's (2007) on vocabulary learning strategiespreferred by students at College of Finance and Business Administration However, studies assuch are still scarce, thus, more research should be done in order to clarify particular strategiesused in different settings and by learners of different levels.

At Tay Bac University (TBU), reading is regarded as an important skill to the studentsbecause these students need to read a lot of English books and documents to support theirprofessional studies However, apart from some students who are quite good at Englishreading, most students especially ethnic minority junior ones find reading difficult They oftencomplain that they have little understanding of the text they have read and hardly finish theirreading exercises and exams successfully Having taught English majored students at TBU forseveral years, I am aware of their problems and very much want to help them to improve theirreading ability Therefore, I intend to examine their reading strategies to find out the reading

strategies used by students of lower reading ability Based on the findings, I am going to makesome implications to improve TBU students' reading proficiency.

1.2 Scope, aims and significance of the study1.2.1 Scope of the study

The present study investigates the reading strategies used by readers among ethnicminority junior first-year English-majored students at Tay Bac University (hereafter TBU).The study of learning strategies in other English skills would be beyond the scope.

1.2.2 Aims of the study

The major purposes of this study are:

(1) to identify the reading strategies utilized by readers among ethnic minority juniorfirst-year English-majored students at Tay Bac University;

(2) to inform the concerned teachers so that they can find ways to improve theirstudents' reading proficiency.

In order to achieve the above aims of the study, the following major research questionwill be addressed:

- What are the reading strategies employed by readers among TBU ethnic minorityjunior first-year English-majored students?

1.2.3 Significance of the study

The study is the first one to be carried out in the field of reading strategies research atTBU It helps give a detailed description of reading strategies used by readers among first-year English- majored students at junior grade at the university More importantly, thefindings of their reading strategies can help teachers to understand more about their studentsand they can serve as the foundation for some recommendations on how to improve the

students' reading proficiency They are also an important basic for reading strategy basedinstruction to be implemented in the future.

1.3 Method of the study

In order to achieve the aims mentioned above, the present study utilized quantitativemethod including tests and survey questionnaires to collect data on the reading strategiesemployed by TBU students First, the two reading comprehension tests were given to thesubjects in order to identify their English reading proficiency levels Then, the questionnaireswere administered to find out their reading strategies.

After the data is analyzed and discussed, some conclusions will be drawn, and some

suggestions will be raised in the thesis.

1.4 Organization of the thesis

The study is divided into five chapters

Chapter 1 includes the rationale, scope, aims, significance, methods and organizationof the study.

Chapter 2 reviews the literature relevant to the topic of research and summarizes someselected studies on reading strategies, which serve as a theoretical and methodologicalfoundation of the study.

Chapter 3 presents the research methodology of the study It provides informationabout the participants, the research method, the instrumentation, the data collection proceduresand data analysis.

Chapter 4, the main part of the study that reports, discusses the main findingsaccording to the research question.

Chapter 5 is the conclusion that summarizes the findings, presents the implications andlimitations of the study and finally give some suggestions for further research.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW2.1 Introduction

This chapter reviews theories related to learning strategies in general and readingstrategies in particular It also summarizes some studies on reading strategies that have beenconducted so far All of these serve as a basic for an investigation into reading strategieswhich is carried out and presented in the next chapter.

2.2 Language learning strategies

2.2.1 Learning strategies - The definitions

Over the last two decades, the study of learning strategies has seen as "explosion ofactivity" (R Ellis, 1994) with the contributions of such well-known researchers as Tarone(1981), Weinstein and Mayer (1986), Rubin (1987), O' Malley and Chamot (1990), Oxford(1990) and Cohen (1998) These studies have helped figure out a comprehensive overview oflearning strategies.

Although research on learning strategies is becoming increasingly popular, there havebeen some considerable differences in the definition of learning strategies in the literature.Taron (1981) claimed that "Learning strategies as attempts to develop linguistic andsociolinguistic competence in the target language" Learning strategies, according toWeinstein and Mayer (1986) (in O' Malley and Chamot 1990), have learning facilitation as agoal and are intentional on the part of the learner The goal of strategy use is to "affect thelearner's motivational or affective state, or the way in which the learner selects, acquires,organizes, or integrates new knowledge." (1986: 43) These definitions are too general incomparison to the complex nature of learning strategies.

Oxford (1990) defined learning strategies as "specific actions taken by the learner tomake learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and moretransferable to new situations" (1990: 5) This definition is judged to be quite comprehensiveas it not only covers the cognitive but also the affective aspects of learning strategies (i.e to

increase enjoyment in learning) However, Oxford's definition is not sufficient in the sensethat it regards learning strategies as "specific actions", i.e learning strategies are behavioral,and therefore, they are mostly observable However, many studies in this field have shownthat learning strategies are difficult to observe as they are not only behavioral.

In an attempt to define learning strategies in a more sensible manner, Weinstein andMayer (in Ellis,1994: 531) claimed that learning strategies "are the behaviors and thoughtsthat a learner engages in during learning that are intended to influence the learner's encodingprocess" Thus, these two authors see learning strategies both behavioral and mental Theirview has been shared by most researchers in strategies studies.

The definition that has been widely accepted to date was proposed by O' Malley andChamot (1990) According to them, learning strategies are "the special thoughts or behaviorsthat individuals use to help them comprehend, learn or retain new information" (1990: 1) Inspite of being quite short, their definition covers the most important aspects of learningstrategies, that is learning strategies are both mental and behavioral (therefore both observableand unobservable), and learning strategies are individually characterized (i.e every learner'sstrategies are different) Because of its comprehensive features, the present study utilized thisdefinition as the key direction in its investigation.

2.2.2 Why studying learning strategies?

When commenting on the role of learning strategies, Weinstein and Mayer (in O'Malley and Chamot 1990) say that learning facilitation is the goal of learning strategies, whichare intentional on the part of the learner The goal of learning strategy use is to "affect thelearner's motivational or affective state, or the way in which the learner selects, acquires,organizes, or integrates new knowledge." (1986: 43).

Oxford (1990), one of the leading teachers and researchers in language learningstrategies field, also gives her own evaluation on learning strategies: "strategies are especiallyimportant for language learning because they are tools for active, self-directed involvement,which is essential for developing communicative competence" (1990: 1)

As a teacher of English, my strong belief is that " It takes better teachers to focus onthe learner" (Peter Strevens, cited in Oxford, 1990: 193) and "We cannot teach another

directly; we can only facilitate his learning (Carl Rogers, cited in Oxford, 1990: 193) Thecurrent approach that is encouraged to be taken to teach English in our country in general andin our own language setting in particular is communicative language teaching in whichlearners are central to the learning process Helping learners to be independent during theirlearning process is a task of every teacher To gain this aim, one of the suggestions is thatlearners should be equipped various strategies so that they control their own learning processconfidently and independently That is the reason why learning strategies are chosen as thetopic of this thesis.

2.2.3 Classification of learning strategies

Much of the earlier research (Rubin 1975 and 1981; Stern 1975; Naiman et al 1978)focused on compiling inventories of the learning strategies that learners were observed to useor reported to use.

Rubin (1981) proposed a classification scheme that subsumes learning strategies undertwo primary groupings and a number of subgroups Rubin's first primary category, consistingof strategies that directly affect learning, includes clarification/verification, monitoring,memorization, guessing/inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning and practice The secondcategory, consisting of strategies that contribute indirectly to learning, includes creatingpractice opportunities and using production tricks such as communication strategies Analternative classification scheme proposed by Naiman et al (1978) contains five broadcategories of learning strategies and a number of secondary categories The primaryclassification includes an active task approach, realization of language as a means ofcommunication and interaction, management of affective demands and monitoring of secondlanguage performance.

Subsequent descriptive studies have endeavored to identify broad classes of learningstrategies, under which a large number of more specific strategies can be grouped The worksby Wenden (1983), Oxford (1990), O'Malley et at (1985a and 1985b), O'Malley and Chamot(1990) have made an important contribution to our knowledge of learning strategies Wenden's(1983) research examined the strategies that adult foreign language learners use in order todirect their own learning She identifies three general categories of self-directing strategies: (1)

knowing about language (relating to what language and language learning involves), (2)planning (relating to what and how of language learning), and (3) self-evaluation (relating toprogress in learning and learner's response to the language experience) Wenden's frameworkdevised as a basic for learner training.

R Oxford (1990) built on the earlier classifications with the aim of subsuming withinher taxonomy virtually every strategy previously mentioned in the literature Oxford (1990)draws a general distinction between direct and indirect strategies The former consists ofmemory, cognitive and compensation strategies while the later includes metacognitive,affective and social strategies However, Oxford's classification of learning strategies issomewhat complicated and confusing as she treats compensation strategies as a direct type oflearning strategies and memory strategies as separate ones from cognitive strategies.

Perhaps, the framework that has been most useful and generally accepted is O'Malleyand Chamot (1990)'s In O'Malley and Chamot 's framework, three major types of strategiesare distinguished in accordance with the information processing model, on which theirresearch is based Metacognitive strategies are "higher order executive skills that may entailplanning for, monitoring or evaluating the success of learning activity" (O'Malley andChamot: 44) Cognitive strategies "operate directly on incoming information, manipulating itin ways that enhance learning" O'Malley and Chamot, 1990: 44) The last subtypes of thesestrategies presented in Table 2.1 were identified by O'Malley and Chamot on the basis oftheir several descriptive studies on learning strategies used by second language learners.

A Metacognitivestrategies

Previewing the main ideas and concepts of the material to be learned, often by skimmingthe text for the organization principle.

Directed attentionDeciding in advance to attend in general to a learning task and to ignore irrelevantdistracters.

Planning for and rehearsing linguistic components necessary to carry out an outcoming task.Selective attentionDeciding in advance to attend to specific aspects of input, often by scanning for key words,

concepts and/or linguistic markers

Self-managementUnderstanding the conditions that help one learn and arranging for the presence of those

Self-monitoringChecking one's comprehension during listening or reading or checking the accuracy and/orappropriateness of one's oral or written production while it is taking place.

Self-evaluationChecking the outcomes of one's own language against a standard after it has beencompleted.

ResourcingUsing target language reference materials such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, or textbooks.RepetitionImitating the language model, including overt practice and silent rehearsal.

GroupingClassifying words, terminology or concepts according to their attributes or meanings.DeductionApplying rules to understand or produce the second language or making up rules based on

Elaborationrelating new information to prior knowledge, relating different parts or new information toeach other, or making meaningful personal associations with the new information.

TransferUsing previous linguistic knowledge or prior skills to assist comprehension or production.DifferencingUsing available information to guess the meanings of new items, predict outcomes or fill in

Eliciting from a teacher or peer additional explanation, rephrasing, examples or verification.CooperationWorking together with one or more peers to solve a problem, pool information, check a

learning task, model a language activity, or get feedback on oral or written performance.Self-talkReducing anxiety by using mental techniques that make one feel competent to do the

learning task.

Table 2.1 Learning strategy definition and classification (O'Malley and Chamot, 1990: 119)

This classification of learning strategies is comprehensive and sufficient and it isapplicable to learning strategy studies on four English disciplines Therefore, the current studywill adopt O'Malley and Chamot's classification of learning strategies as the theoreticalframework for investigation.

2.4 The theory of reading2.4.1 Definition of reading

For many foreign language or second language learners, reading is a very importantskill Concerning the role of reading, Carrell (1988:1) stated that "Without solid readingproficiency, second language learners cannot perform at levels they must in order to succeed".Anderson (1999) also confirms that "the more exposure a student has to language throughreading, the greater the possibilities that overall language proficiency will increase" (1999:3).

Reading plays such a significant part in the success of second language learning and itis essential to understand what reading really is However, the act of reading is not completelyunderstood nor easily described In a general term, (Anderson,1999:1) defines reading as "anactive, fluent process which involves the reader and the reading material in building meaning".This definition of reading has been generally shared by other researchers.

According to Rumelhart (1977), reading involves the reader, the text and theinteraction between the reader and text Aebersold and Field (1997:15) share the same view onreading: "Reading is what happens when people look at a text and assign meaning to thewritten symbols in that text The text and the reader are the two physical entities necessary forthe reading process to start It is, however, the interaction between the text and the reader thatconstitutes the actual meaning" These interaction, in their opinion, are the interactionsbetween purpose and manner of reading and through reading strategies and schema Purposedetermines how people read a text People may read the text to understand it (reading for fullcomprehension), or simply to get the general idea (skimming), to find the part that contains theinformation they need (scanning) Readers also use some mental activities that are oftenreferred to as reading strategies to construct meaning from a text In addition, readers base ontheir previous knowledge that they bring meaning to the text to assist their reading

comprehension This prior knowledge is known as the schema Research in reading has shownthat schema plays an important role in helping the reader to comprehend a text.

The above-mentioned views on reading are only general ones In order to understandmore about the nature of reading, it is necessary to take a closer look at the actual process thatreally takes place in the reader's mind So far, several models have been proposed to describethis process The next section is going to present these models of reading and discuss theirstrengths and weaknesses.

2.4.2 Models of reading process

Up to now, attempts to describe the interaction between reader and text have beennumerous and different views of the reading process have been proposed These views are

often grouped under three different reading models named the bottom-up, the top-down andthe interactive ones.

2.4.2.1 Bottom-up model

Early researchers often assumed a passive, bottom-up view of second languagereading, that is it was viewed as "a decoding process of reconstructing the author's intendedmeaning" via recognizing the printed letters and words and building up a meaning for a textfrom the smallest textual units at the bottom (letters and words) to larger and larger units at thetop (phrases, clauses, intersentencial linkages) (Rivers 1964, 1968; Plaister 1968; Yorio 1971).In other words, in the bottom-up reading model, the reader begins with the written text(the bottom) and constructs meaning from the letters, words, phrases and sentences foundwithin and then processes the text in a linear fashion The coming data from the text must bereceived before the high level mental storage of understanding transform and recode the data.

Gough (1972) who supported this reading model explained the sequence of the readingsystem from a bottom-up perspective as follows: First, the graphemic information entersthrough the visual system and it is transformed at the first level from a letter character, that isfrom graphemic representation to a phonemic representation Second, the phonemic

representation is converted at level two into a word The meaning units or words then pass onto the third level and meaning is assimilated into the knowledge system.

In short, the bottom-up model tends to be linear as they start with the printed stimuliand proceed to higher level stage, one step after another The basis for bottom-up processing isthe linguistic knowledge of the reader However, this model reveals several shortcomings indescribing the actual reading process.

An important drawback of this model, as pointed out by Samuel and Kamil (1988: 31),is "the lack of feedback, in that no mechanism is provided to allow for processing stageswhich occur later in the system to influence processing which occurs earlier in the system.Because of the lack of feedback loops in the early bottom-up models, it was difficult toaccount for sentence-context effects and the role of prior knowledge of text topic asfacilitating variables in word recognition and comprehension.".

Due to this limitation, and together with the advent of Goodman's top-down view ofreading, the bottom-up view of reading fell into disfavor.

2.4.2.2 Top-down model

About over three decades ago, the views on reading changed together with the down model of reading Goodman (1975:135) described reading as a "psycholinguisticguessing game", in which the "reader reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which hasbeen encoded by a writer as a graphic display" According to this point of view, the readerreconstructs meaning from written language by using graphonic, syntactic and semanticsystems of the language, but he/she merely uses cues from the three levels of language topredict meaning, and most important, confirms these predictions by relating them to his/herpast experiences and knowledge of the language.

top-Although Goodman did not characterize his theory as a top-down model, several otherreading experts (Anderson 1978; Cziko 1978) have considered it as basically a concept-driventop-down pattern in which "higher level processes interact with and direct the flow ofinformation through low level processes" (Stanovich 1980:34) In this top-down approach, thereader begins with a set of hypotheses or predictions about the meaning of text he is about toread and then selectively sample the text to determine whether or not his predictions are

correct Reading is a process of reconstructing meaning rather than decoding form, and the

reader only resorts to decoding if other means fail This perspective was shared by many otherreading specialists such as Carrel (1988), Clarke and Siberstern (1977), Mackey andMountford (1979) and Widdowson (1978, 1983) as they viewed reading as "an active processin which the second language reader is an active information processor who predict whilesampling only parts of the actual text" (in Carrel, 1983;3).

Just like bottom-up models, top-down models do have some limitations These models"tend to emphasize such higher-level skills as the prediction of meaning by means of contextclues or certain kinds of background knowledge at the expense of such lower skills as therapid and accurate identification of lexical and grammatical form That is, in making theperfectly valid point that fluent reading is primarily a cognitive process, they tend todeemphasize the perceptual and decoding dimensions of that process" (Eskey,1988:93).

Samuel and Kamil (1988) also shared the same view According to them, one of theproblems for the top-down model is that for many texts, the reader has little knowledge of thetopic and cannot generate predictions A more serious problem is that even if a skilled readercould generate predictions, the amount of time necessary to generate a prediction may begreater than the amount of time the skilled reader needs simply to recognize the words.

Due to the above limitations of both bottom-up and top-down models, a new and moreinsightful model of reading process has been proposed by Rumelhart (1977, 1980) Sanford

and Garrod (1981) and Van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) under the name of interactive model.

2.4.2.3 Interactive model

The interactive model combines elements of both bottom-up and top-down approaches,using that "a pattern is synthesized based on information provided simultaneously fromseveral knowledge sources" (Stanovich, 1980:35).

Widdownson (1979) has discussed reading as the process of combining textualinformation with the information the reader brings to a text In this view, the reading process isnot simply a matter of extracting information from the text Rather, it is one in which thereading activates a range of knowledge in the reader's mind that he/she uses, and that, in turn,may be refined and extended by the new information supplied by the text.

Eskey (1988) defined the interactive model as a reading model that "posits a constantinteraction between bottom-up and top-down processing in reading, each source ofinformation contributing to a comprehensive reconstruction of the meaning of the text"(1988:94) According to this view, good readers are regarded as "both good decoders and goodinterpreters of texts, their decoding skills become more automatic but no less important astheir reading skill develops" (1984: 94) Eskey also believed that to achieve both fluency andaccuracy in reading, developing readers must work at perfecting both their bottom-uprecognition skills and their top-down interpretation strategies In other word, good reading -that is, fluent and accurate reading - can result only from a constant interaction between thesetwo processes.

The following comment by Stanovich (1980) can summarize all the strengths of theinteractive model over the other two models: "Interactive models of reading appear to providea more accurate conceptualization of reading performance than strictly top-down or bottom-upmodels When combined with an assumption of compensatory processing (that a deficit in anyparticular process will result in a greater reliance on their knowledge sources, regardless oftheir level in the processing hierarchy), interactive models provide a better account of theexisting data on the use of orthographic structure and sentence context by good and poorreaders"(1980: 32)

Therefore, it is generally agreed that the interactive model is the best one that can trulyreflect the reading process that takes place in the reader's mind In this process, the readerconstantly shuttles between bottom-up and top-down processes and he can not be successful inreading comprehension without either of these two processes As this study focuses on readingstrategies, the next part is going to summarize some outstanding studies on reading strategiesthat have been carried out.

2.5 Reading strategies

2.5.1 Definition of reading strategies

Much attention has been paid to the study of reading in general and reading strategiesin particular Reading strategies are of interest for what they reveal about the way the readers

manage their interaction with written text and how these strategies are related to textcomprehension.

As mentioned earlier, research in second language learning suggests that learners use avariety of strategies to assist them with the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of information.C Brantmeior (2002) defined reading strategies as "the comprehension processes that readersuse in order to make sense of what they read" (2002:1) This process may involve skimming,scanning, guessing, recognizing cognates and word families, reading for meaning, predicting,activating general knowledge, making inferences, following references and separating mainideas from supporting ones (Barnet, 1988) Obviously, some strategies may be more usefulthan others with different types of reading texts and tasks.

Based on O'Malley and Chamot's (1990), reading strategies can be understood as thespecial thoughts or behaviours that individuals use to help them to comprehend, learn andretain new information from the reading text These strategies are both observable andunobservable and individually different According to O'Malley and Chamot's (1990), readingstrategies can be classified into three main types including metacognitive, cognitive andsocial/affective strategies A categorization scheme of these strategies have been provided insection 2.1.

2.5.2 Review of reading strategies research

A considerable number of studies examine the comprehension strategies that secondlanguage readers utilize to process a text In these studies, the participants are quite diverse,some from elementary, secondary and university levels, some from remedial reading classesand others enrolled in courses taught at non-university language centres Obviously, theparticipants are of many different ages and backgrounds Furthermore, the investigators use avariety of research method and tasks to examine strategy type and frequency of strategy useincluding think-aloud reports, interviews, questionnaires, observations and written recalls(Bernhardt, 1991)

One of the earliest pieces of research on individual learners' reading strategies wasconducted by Hosenfield (1977) She examined successful and unsuccessful readers to findout what types of cognitive operations they used to process written texts Participants wereninth grade students who were learning French Before conducting her study, she classified

readers based on a test of L2 reading Then, in an oral interview, participants were asked toread a text and do think-aloud reports (that is, she directed them to say in their first languagewhatever came to their mind while processing each sentence in the text) Hosenfield found outthat the successful readers used the following kinds of strategies (1977: 233-4):

* Keep the meaning of the passage in mind* read in broad phrases

* skip inessential words

* guess from context the meaning of unknown words* have a good self-concept as a reader

* identify the grammatical category of words* demonstrate sensitivity to a different word order* examine illustrations

* read the title and make inferences from it

* use orthographic information (e.g capitalization)* refer to the side glossary

* use the glossary as the last resort* look up words correctly

* continue if unsuccessful at decoding a word or a phrase* recognize cognates

* use their knowledge of the world

* follow through with a proposed solution to a problem* evaluate their guesses.

Poor readers, on the other hand, translated sentences and lost the general meaning ofthe passage, rarely skipped words or looked up unknown words in a glossary and had a poorconcept as a reader While these results clearly described the strategies the students used toprocess the text, they did not link the strategy use to comprehension of specific paragraphs orto text as whole The data only focused on sentence level comprehension so the results of thestudy did not reveal overall comprehension of the entire text.

A decade later, Block's (1986) study compared the reading comprehension strategiesused by native English speakers and ESL students who were enrolled in remedial reading

course at the university level and she connected these behaviors to comprehension Theparticipants were identified as non-proficient readers because they failed a college readingproficiency test before they study Subjects read two exploratory passages selected from anintroductory psychology textbook, and were asked to think aloud while they reading (theyreported after each sentence) After reading and retelling each passage, the participantsanswered twenty multiple choice comprehension questions Block developed a scheme toclassify strategies that consisted of two types: general strategies and local strategies Generalstrategies included the following behaviors: anticipate content, recognize text structure,integrate information, question information, distinguish main ideas, interpret the text, usegeneral knowledge and associations to background, comment on behavior or process, monitorcomprehension, correct behavior, focused on textual meaning as a whole, and react to the text.Local strategies were: paraphrase, reread, question meaning of a clause or a sentence, questionmeaning of a word and solve a vocabulary problem Of the 9 ESL students in the study, thereaders with higher comprehension scores on the retelling and the multiple choice questionsintegrated new information in the text with old information, distinguish main ideas fromdetails, referred to their background and focused on textual meaning as a whole This meansthey all employed "general strategies" On the other hand, readers with low comprehensionscores rarely distinguished main ideas from details, rarely referred to their background,infrequently focused on textual meaning and seldom integrated information.

Sarig (1987) investigated the contribution of L1 reading strategies and L2 languageproficiency to L2 reading, as well as the relationship between L1 and L2 reading strategies.Sarig's subjects were 10 female native Hebrew readers who were studying English as a foreignlanguage Sarig classified the data from think-aloud reports into four general types ofbehaviors or responses: (1) technical aids, (2) clarification and simplification, (3) coherencedetection and (4) monitoring moves Sarig's results revealed that subjects transferred strategiesfrom L1 reading to L2 reading and that the same reading strategy types "accounted for successand failures in both languages to almost the same extent" (Sarig, 1987: 118) Top-down,global strategies led to both successful and unsuccessful reading comprehension The twolanguage dependent strategies, the clarification and simplification strategies contributed tounsuccessful reading comprehension in both L1 and L2 Results also indicated that most of thestrategies used during the reading comprehension process were particular to each reader or

that each individual read differently and used a different combination of strategies Theseresults do not duplicate Block's (1986) where global strategies led to successful (notunsuccessful) reading comprehension.

Some studies have shown that better readers are also better strategy users Carrel(1989) for example, conducted a study to investigate the metacognitive awareness of secondlanguage reader strategies in both their first and second language and the relationship betweenthis awareness and their comprehension Her first group of subjects was native Spanishspeakers of intermediate and high-intermediate levels studying English as a second languageat a university level institute Her second group consisted of native English speakers learningSpanish as a foreign language in first, second and third-year courses Carrel first askedsubjects to read two texts, one in L1 and one in L2 She controlled for content schemata asboth texts were on a general topic of language The subjects answered multiple choicecomprehension questions about the text followed by a strategy use questionnaire Carrelcorrelated strategy use with comprehension and concluded that the ESL readers of moreadvanced proficiency level perceived "global" or top-down strategies as more effective Withthe Spanish as a L2 group, she found that at the lower proficiency levels, subjects used morebottom-up or "local" strategies.

The last study mentioned here was conducted by Block (1992) He investigated thecomprehension monitoring process used by first and second language readers of English Thesubjects were 25 college freshmen and consisted of proficient and non-proficient readers ofEnglish While reading an expository text, the participants were asked to think aloud or morespecifically, to "say everything they understood and everything they were thinking as theyread each sentence" (Block, 1992: 323) The results indicated that when facing a vocabularyproblem, proficient ESL readers used background knowledge, decided on whether the wordcontributed to the overall meaning of the passage, reread the sentence and used syntactic clues.The meaning-based strategies are classified as global behaviors On the other hand, non-proficient ESL readers focused on identifying lexical problems and did little to figure out themeaning of the words.

From the above findings of research in reading strategies, it becomes clear that thereare indeed differences between successful or good readers and less successful or poor readersin terms of strategy use Overall, more proficient readers combine both top-down and bottom-

up strategies in reading but tend to use more top-down strategies than bottom-up ones.Specifically, they exhibit the following types of reading behaviors:

* overview text before reading

* employ context clues such as title, subheadings and diagrams

* look for important information while reading and pay great attention to it than other information

* attempt to relate important points in text to one another in order to understand the text as a whole

* activate and use prior knowledge to interpret text

* reconsider and revise hypothesis about the meaning of the text based on text content

* attempt to infer information from the text

* attempt to identify or infer the meaning of words not understood or recognized* monitor text comprehension

* use strategies to remember text (paraphrasing, repetition, making notes, summarizing, self-questioning etc)

* understand relationship between parts of text and recognize text structure* change reading strategies when comprehension is perceived not be proceeding smoothly

* evaluate the qualities of text

* reflect on and process additionally after a part has been read and anticipate or planfor the use of knowledge gained from the reading (Hosenfield 1977; Block 1986; Carrel1986)

While this list is not priotized or complete, it helps provide a description of thecharacteristics of successful readers and serves as an important foundation for more researchinto reading.

However, a gap that can be found in these studies on reading strategies is that fewresearchers who have attempted to classify reading strategies into a more comprehensivescheme except for top-down and bottom-up strategies (or global or local strategies) That isthe gap that the current thesis study tries to bridge by using O'Malley and Chamot's scheme toclassify the reading strategies used by readers among the TBU students As mentioned earlier,

this scheme was developed by O'Malley and Chamot's (1990) based on their severaldescriptive studies on learning strategies in four English skills It can reflect the actual readingprocess as it contains both top-down and bottom-up strategies within its categories The top-down strategies included in this scheme are elaboration (relating prior knowledge to newinformation), transfer (using previous linguistic knowledge or prior skills to assistcomprehension), inferencing (using the available information to guess meaning of new itemsand predict outcomes) and summarizing (making mental or oral summary of new informationgained through reading) The bottom-up strategies are grouping (classifying words,terminology or concept according to their attributes or meanings), deduction (applying rules tounderstand the second language), recombination (constructing a meaningful sentence or largerlanguage sequence by combing known elements in a new way), key word methods (remembera new word in the second language) and translation (using the first language as a base forunderstanding the second language) In addition, there are metacognitive strategies thatinvolve executive processes in planning for reading, monitoring comprehension andevaluating how well one has achieved a reading activity Therefore, this classificationframework is quite comprehensive and applicable to examining reading strategies In thisstudy, the TBU subjects' reading strategies are classified according to this scheme.

The classification of learning strategies is also a complex work done by a considerablenumber of researchers Based on descriptive studies on learning strategies of ESL and EFLlearners, Rubin (1975), Naiman et al (1978), Wenden (1983), Oxford (1990), O'Malley et al

(1985a and 1985b) and O'Malley and Chamot (1990) have proposed useful schemes forclassification of learning strategies Of these schemes, O'Malley and Chamot's framework hasbeen most useful and generally accepted to date In O'Malley and Chamot's framework, threemajors types including metacognotive, cognitive and social/affective strategies aredistinguished in accordance with the information processing model, on which their research isbased Such a detailed and sufficient classification learning strategies is presented in table 2.1and is going to be adopted for the investigation of reading strategies for this study.

The second part of this chapter covers the important theories related to reading and anoverview of studies on reading strategies of successful and unsuccessful learners Thesetheorists describe a process that moves both bottom-up and top-down, depending on the typeof text as well as on the reader's background knowledge, language proficiency level,motivation, strategy use and cultural shaped beliefs about reading In comparison to thebottom-up and top-down models, interactive models of reading provide a more accurateconceptualization of reading performance and describe exactly what really happens during thereading process According to this interactive model, good reading can only result from aconstant interaction between the bottom-up and the top-down processes In other words, goodreaders are those who can "efficiently integrate" both of these processes This view is nowshared by a majority of researchers in a numerous number of studies on reading.

The last part of the chapter discusses reading strategies, the focus of the thesis, indetails Most of the researchers have concluded that there are indeed differences betweeneffective and ineffective readers in terms of strategy used The more proficient readers oftenemployed both top-down and bottom-up strategies but appear to use more top-down ones Adetailed description of reading strategies employed by effective readers is provided so as toserve as the basic for any research into reading strategies.

The next chapter is the study on reading strategies used by the TBU students, whichhas been conducted in the light of the theories discussed above.

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

The previous chapter has provided a necessary theoretical background for the presentstudy This chapter presents the methodology used for the data collection and analysis in thestudy It starts with a description of the participants and the setting of the study It also provides

information about the research method It then describes data collection instruments andanalysis procedures of the study

3.1 The context of the study3.1.1 Participants

There are 54 students at the age of 17 to 22, of them 32 students are from differentEthnic Minority Groups including 14 students from Tay Group, 10 from Nung Group, 5 arefrom Muong Group, and the rest are from Thai Group The participants in this study wereamong these 32 ethnic minority students Of them there were 26 girls and 6 boys who mostlycame from the countryside Most of these students were 19 years old (16 students), 11 were 20

years old and only 5 students were 21 years old All of them spent between 4-10 years

learning English in which 20 students have been learning English for 8 years Theirproficiency levels were generally reported to be between elementary and pre-intermediate.Table 3.1 summarizes the background information about the participants such as genders,ages, number of years learning English and their self-assessed English proficiency.

Totalnumber ofparticipant

GenderAge (years)Number of years

learning EnglishEnglish proficiency

Table 3.1 Background information about the participants

These junior students are now studying the second semester of the course majoring inEnglish The course for these students lasts from the first year to the third year of training atthe university They have to learn some professional subjects in English to become teachers ofEnglish after three years studying English at the university Therefore, English in general andreading skills in particular play a very important role in their study at the university.

There are some reasons for choosing these freshermen as the participants of this study.Firstly, the training quality of these students is always of great concern to both the authority

and teachers at TBU The findings of the study would provide essential information forteachers to improve TBU students' reading proficiency and hence contribute to enhancing theoverall training quality of these students Secondly, they are suitable participants for the studybecause they have already finished the first semester in English reading so their Englishreading proficiency is of great concern for me to conduct the study on reading strategies Inaddition, as these students are ones who I have been directly teaching, it is feasible for me tohave favourable conditions to carry out all the steps of the research process.

3.1.2 Setting of the study

The present study was conducted from mid April to mid June when the participantswere in the second semester of the first year Up to the time of the study, they had beenstudying English at the university for nearly a year with 3 reading periods per week (nearly 90periods) They had been learning some books including Practise your reading skills by HoangHai Anh-Quach Ngoc Anh-Le Thi Minh Hien, Cause and Effect by Partricia Ackert and someother materials adapted to suit their proficiency levels such as New Headway Pre-intermediate All of the textbooks and materials aim to provide these students with basicknowledge of English At the time of the study, they were learning Cause and Effect byPartricia Ackert as a textbook for the first-year junior English majored students at Tay BacUniversity to study reading skills While using this book we found that the book matches theobjectives of the learning program and students levels of proficiency because the book is forstudents who know the basic structures of English and have a vocabulary of about 2000English words The 25 lessons are in 5 units The exercises provide practice with vocabulary,comprehension, inference, main idea, cause and effect, context clues, scanning, sequence,summarizing, word forms, articles, prepositions, two-word verbs, compound words,connecting words, and noun substitutes The topics in the five units are quite interesting andlearners-friendly The book is also easy to study However, most of tasks are designed in thesame way and in the same order so that teachers have to redesign the tasks and the activitiesquite often to match students interests Besides, teachers meet difficulties when they use thisbook because there is no teachers' book to support them and provide appropriate guidance tothem In addition, students' levels of proficiency are not equal Among these students, 2 have