Using short storiesto enhance students’ reading motivation a case of 11th graders at a high school in lao cai city

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -O0O - TRẦN THỊ THƠM USING SHORT STORIES TO ENHANCE STUDENTS’ READING MOTIVATION: A CASE OF 11TH GRADERS AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN LAO CAI CITY Sử dụng truyện ngắn để tăng cường động lực đọc: Nghiên cứu trường hợp học sinh lớp 11 trường Trung học Phổ thông Lào Cai M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Hanoi, 2021 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -O0O - TRẦN THỊ THƠM USING SHORT STORIES TO ENHANCE STUDENTS’ READING MOTIVATION: A CASE OF 11TH GRADERS AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN LAO CAI CITY Sử dụng truyện ngắn để tăng cường động lực đọc: Nghiên cứu trường hợp học sinh lớp 11 trường Trung học Phổ thông Lào Cai M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Le Van Canh Hanoi, 2021 DECLARATION I hereby declare that I am the author of the report entitled “Using short stories to enhance students’ reading motivation: A case of 11th graders at a high school in Lao Cai city”, submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of master at the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies - Vietnam National University I declare that the material is original, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text of the thesis, nor does the thesis contain any material that infringes copyright, and has not previously been submitted to this university or any other institution in application for admission to a degree, diploma or other qualifications i ABSTRACT This study investigated the factors that demotivated high-school students’ learning of reading English and examined how short stories made their attitudes towards reading changed under the impacts of reading practice Participants of the study were 61 students at a high-school in Lao Cai province In the study, the researcher applied the action research model with pre- and post-intervention questionnaires as the main source of information for analysis The data were then illustrated with a series of tables, charts and descriptions which were also compared with students’ opinions shared in the opened-ended questions of the survey to draw suitable conclusions From the findings, the researcher made some suggestions for making use of short stories to promote reading The findings from the data analysis indicated that most students found reading English short stories beneficial for language learning and agreed that it could be a motivational factor that promoted reading Also, based on her own practice, the researcher suggested certain considerations that should be taken into for improving the effectiveness of short story reading activities ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to people who supported me during the process of doing this research Without their guidance and helps, I would have not completed this study First, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my great supervisor Assoc Prof Dr Le Van Canh, who has supported me throughout my thesis with his patience and acknowledge Actually, his guidance and feedback significantly helped me during the time of the study and writing of this thesis Besides my great supervisor, my sincere thanks go to my school administrators who always encouraged me to apply innovative techniques in teaching I also would like to say thanks to my students who were willing to take part in this research Without their enthusiasm to help me collect the data, this thesis would not have been completed Last but not least, I would like to thank my family members who always stand by me, help me overcome difficulties in the process of doing the research They bring me strength, self- confidence, and braveness to pursue my study iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vi Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION .1 1.1 Background and rationale 1.2 Aims of the study and the research questions 1.3 Scope of the study 1.4 Significance of the study 1.5 Design of the study Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Reading and reading comprehension 2.1.1 Definition of reading and reading comprehension 2.1.2 The role of reading in second language learning 2.2 Reading motivation 2.2.1 Definitions of reading motivation .5 2.2.2 Types of motivation .6 2.2.3 The importance of reading motivation in foreign language learning 2.3 Short stories as a motivator to students to read .7 2.3.1 What are short stories? 2.3.2 Reasons for using short stories in foreign language teaching 2.3.3 Criteria for choosing short stories .10 2.3.4 Some common-used activities to teach reading with short stories 10 2.4 Studies on using short stories in reading comprehension 12 Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY 14 3.1 Action research framework 14 3.1.1 What is an action research? 14 3.1.2 Steps in action research .15 3.2 Subjects of the study .18 iv 3.3 Procedures .19 3.4 Data collection instruments and analysis 23 3.4.1 Data collection instruments .23 3.4.2 Data analysis .25 Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 26 4.1 Findings from the questionnaires .26 4.1.1 Factors affecting students’ motivation for reading English 26 4.1.2 Changes of student’s reading motivation after the use of short stories .34 4.2 Findings from the interviews and observation 37 4.3 Summary 39 Chapter 5: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION 40 5.1 Recapitulation 40 5.2 Implications 41 5.3 Limitations .43 5.4 Suggestions for further research 43 REFERENCES 45 APPENDICES I APPENDIX I APPENDIX IV APPENDIX V v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table Plans of integrating short stories in teaching 21 Table Reasons for reading English outside the classroom 29 Table Text types students often read outside the classroom .32 Figure The six cyclical steps of action research (Efron & Ravid, 2013,p.8) 15 Figure The action research cycle (Kemmis &McTaggart, 1988,p.14) .16 Figure Students’ attitudes towards the importance of reading skill 26 Figure 2.Students’ interest in reading 27 Figure Students’ self-evaluation of reading skills 28 Figure 4 Students’ frequency of practice reading English outside the classroom 29 Figure 4.5 Students’ difficulties in reading English outside classroom 30 Figure Frequency of reading short stories .33 Figure 7.Topics of reading interest .34 Figure 8.Students’ interest in reading after the use of short stories 35 Figure 9.Change of students’ opinions on reading short stories 36 Figure 10.Students’ decision on continuing to read English short stories 37 vi Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter presents the rationale to the study and states the aims, scope, and organization of the thesis 1.1 Background and rationale English is commonly considered the foreign language and is popularly used by individuals from various countries to communicate with each other when they meet The ability to use this language has become a prerequisite for interviewing job candidates in a variety of businesses and organisations around the world due to the prevalence of English in both social and work-related circumstances Language learners should have adequate exposure and practice numerous skills to be able to use English, of which reading is one of the most important Reading is not just a way to sustain social contact or acquire knowledge of words, but it is also necessary for the learning process (Watkins, 2017) In studying and mastering foreign languages, such as English, reading plays a very important role (Pathan & Al-Delsi, 2013) Reading is an important means to gain knowledge and to share information (Dlugosz, 2000) Watkins (2017) claimed that reading is an essential source of understandable input, and adequate exposure to a large amount of such input is crucial for success in language learning (Watkins, 2017) The excellence of reading skills obviously improves the reading process for students, thereby allowing them to gain more knowledge from a variety of English reading materials Being good at reading also has the potential to help develop the overall language skills of students thanks to the fact their exposure to the target language are improved, thus facilitates the retention of vocabulary and increases the opportunity for the words learned to be used in the speech and writing While necessary, reading is supposed to be challenging to acquire Reading is a complex and multifaceted task (Demiröz, 2010) because it involves the combination of attention, memory, perceptual and understanding processes (Kern, 1989) Due to this fact, reading is widely perceived as a boring activity by a number of students, which they feel demotivated and reluctant to practice In my school, the similar situation occurred Students often complain that reading is difficult, boring, thus demotivating Therefore, as a teacher, I decided to try different methods to stimulate students with the hope that they could make students more interested in reading Short stories are among those I decided to try using as it is proved in the literature that literary texts have the potential to stimulate language and linguistic skill, arouse inspiration and lead students to become critical thinkers (Erkaya, 2005) Therefore, I decided to conduct this research, titled “Using short stories to enhance students’ reading motivation: A case of 11th graders at a high school in Lao Cai city” in order to investigate the impacts of short stories in motivating students to read 1.2 Aims of the study and the research questions The research aimed at identifying the factors that demotivate students to read and examining how short stories reading activity can be used to motivating students to learn reading skills To be able to achieve the above-mentioned goals, the researcher proposed two research questions: What factors affect students’ reading motivation? How does the use of short stories enhance student’s reading motivation? 1.3 Scope of the study The research focuses on investigating factors that demotivate students to read as well as the impacts of reading English short stories in motivating students to learn reading with high school students in Lao Cai to be able to decide whether the inclusion of stories reading in teaching reading raised students’ interest in reading and whether it can be used to encourage students to practice reading English more 1.4 Significance of the study It is expected that the research findings can provide the researcher with deeper understanding about the benefits of using stories to assist teaching and learning reading and its potentials to motivate students to read Based on this fact, the researcher can also predict the problems she may encounter when using short were, in general, willing to actively participated in raising their voice Although some students preferred to share their ideas in mother tongue when they couldn’t explain in English, their participation in discussion proved that they were attracted by the activities associated with stories 4.3 Summary This chapter provides detailed information about the data collected and analysis According to the findings, students were well aware of the importance of reading skill, however, they encountered a number of problems in reading, which significantly demotivated them The use of short stories appears to be an effective way to improve students’ motivation for reading English thanks to a number of benefits it brought to readers 39 Chapter 5: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION This chapter provides a summary of the research, the implications, limitations and recommendations for further study 5.1 Recapitulation The study investigated the factors affecting students’ reading motivation and the impacts of reading English stories on enhancing reading motivation Data were collected though two surveys before and after the intervention period The findings from data analysis have shown that there were a number of elements that may demotivate students in reading; however, reading stories has the potential to stimulate students to read after their class hours Answers for the two research questions raised at the beginning of the study are presented below Research question What factors affect students’ reading motivation? The data analysis has shown that students participating in the study were well aware of the importance of reading skill in acquiring English More than half of the students believed that they were quite good and good at reading However, they lacked significant interest in reading due to a number of difficulties they encountered in reading such as the inadequate vocabulary, grammatical and social background knowledge, the uninteresting and unfamiliar topics and the lack of resources Therefore, the majority of students did not read very often after their class hours but only read when they needed to prepare for the coming exams, when they had free time and felt like reading, or when their teachers asked them to Text type and topics to read were also among the important factors that can affect students’ reading motivation The finds of the study revealed that choosing stories to motivate reading was reasonable as it was the most favourable type of literary texts for the students Regarding the topics, “People”, “Relationship”, “Daily life”, “Natural and animals” are those of students’ interest Research question How does the use of short stories enhance student’s reading motivation? 40 The findings of the study have shown that reading stories have positive impacts on enhancing students’ motivation for reading Students’ interest in reading raised significantly among those who disliked it before, which resulted in the remarkable reduction of the number of students who disliked reading and witnessed a gain in the number of students who liked it The research findings also showed that students changed their opinions about reading because they found that reading stories turned out to be beneficial for their language learning Reading helped them improve their vocabulary, grammatical and social background knowledge Besides, students also learned a number of lessons that can be applied in their real lives Last but not least, reading can also be a form of entertainment because the plots were interesting to read; therefore, according to students, reading made them better released from stress and helped them become calmer and more patient The fact that students felt like reading more because they found the activity interesting and enjoyable to them proved that students’ intrinsic motivation had been improved thanks to the application of short stories From the findings, it can be concluded that reading English was useful for improving students’ motivation Therefore, most of the students who participated in the research decided that they would continue reading English stories after the research period 5.2 Implications Since reading English stories can improve students’ motivation and also brings a number of other benefits to students, it is suggested that the activity should be promoted in English classroom However, a number of factors should be taken into consideration in order to make better use of English stories reading activity The first advice is that teachers should be careful in choosing the stories for students to read Hill (1994, p.15) points out three other basic criteria of choosing a text: (1) the needs and abilities of the students; (2) the linguistic and stylistic level of the text; (3) the amount of background information required for a true appreciation of the material This advice is also useful for the researcher in choosing the stories for students to read 41 According to Grellet (1981) most of what we usually read is what we want to read Attractive topics which suit students’ interest can better motivate them because students easily get bored if they have to read something that they not care about (Spack, 1985) Such topics as people, relationships, daily life, natures and animals should be at the top priority as students show more interest in reading about them Due to the fact that the lack of vocabulary, grammatical and social cultural knowledge cause a lot of problems for students’ reading, it is advisable that the stories chosen should be suitable with their level of proficiency as too difficult texts could take a lot of time to read, thus reduces students’ motivation (Pardede, 2011) Furthermore, teachers should provide timely and appropriate support such as preteaching some difficult lexical and grammatical items or giving explanation about the cultural differences to facilitate students’ reading Activities of various types should also be designed in order to make students more interested in reading Personalization is another useful technique that teachers should take into consideration when designing discussion questions as it could be more attractive to students It is undeniable that vocabulary knowledge plays a critical role in language learning (Cameron, 2001) because languages are based on words (Thornbury, 2002) Having good vocabulary knowledge, therefore, is important for language acquisition and ensures successful communication (Schmitt, 2000) As reading stories makes students understand the new lexical items better and remember them for longer time, it is suggested that teachers choose texts rich in language (Pathan & Al-Dersi, 2013) and from a wide choice of topics so that students can expose to useful words of different topics in different contexts, thus improve their vocabulary knowledge According to the study, students read more when the teachers ask them to, and when they have time and the reasons to so Therefore, teachers should keep 42 encouraging them to move on by frequently requesting them to read Besides, offering incentives such as some plus points or small gifts for those who complete all the task, make good progress or those who read more than requested can be good methods for keeping students’ motivation and forming the reading habit It is also important for teachers to provide students with sufficient materials and introduce them the resources available so that students can find stories to read when they would like to rather than waiting for the teachers to share Another important advice is that, though knowing that reading stories is good, teachers should give students a suitable number of stories to read so that they not feel overloaded Asking students to write journals or learning diaries are also suggested to help teachers make sure about students’ engagement in learning Last but not least, to be able to integrate stories reading into language teaching needs time and effort, it is advisable that teachers interested in using short stories to motivate reading English form a team to share the workload and learn from good practices 5.3 Limitations Although the author of this study has made great efforts to fulfill the research, shortcomings are inevitable due to both subjective and objective reasons First, the research was conducted on a small scale with only 61 students in two English classes Therefore, the findings of the story might not surely entail similar reaction of larger groups The second limitation is that due to the lack of time, the author of the study was not able to conduct the second cycle of research and failed to make sure that the students really continued reading after the intervention period In addition, the data were collected mainly by questionnaires, although open-ended questions were provided, the researched suggests that more instruments should be employed to confirm the reliability of the findings 5.4 Suggestions for further research For further research, the following topics could be good choices Firstly, 43 future research can investigate the impacts of English stories reading for learners of different age groups to see whether stories reading have the similar effects on every single learner Researchers about the use of stories to motivate the learning of other language skills or in teaching integrated skills can be also a good suggestion In addition, an investigation into the extent to which stories reading be integrated in a language teaching curriculum and how this can be done might be 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Boston, MA: Pearson Watkins (2017) Teaching and Developing Reading Skills Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 38-40 Wilkins, D.A (1972) Linguistics in Language Teaching Australia: Edward Arnold 48 APPENDICES APPENDIX PRE-INTERVENTION QUESTIONNAIRE This questionnaire aims to investigate your habits of reading and the factors affecting your reading motivation to support the completion of a research on using short stories to motivate students to read Please complete the questionnaire by choosing the option(s) that best fit you and providing answers for the open questions in the provided space Thank you very much for your cooperation How you like reading English? A extremely like B moderately like C slightly like D slightly dislike E dislike Give two reasons for your answer: ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… How you evaluate your English reading skills? A Very good B Good C Quite good D Not very good E Very bad What is your opinion about the importance of English reading skill? A Very important B Important C Quite important D Not very important I E Not important at all How often you practice reading English outside the classroom? A Very often (i.e every day) B Quite often (i.e once a week) C When I have free time and feel like reading D Before my exams E When my teachers ask me to F Never G Others:………………………………………………………………………… Why you read English outside the classroom? A Because I like reading English B Because I think reading more in English can help me improve my English skill C Because my English teacher asks me to D Because I have to learn to pass my English exam E Others:………………………………………………………………………… Which difficulties you encounter in reading English outside the classroom? A lack of vocabulary B lack of grammatical knowledge C lack of cultural and social knowledge D Topics are not interesting and unfamiliar E Having nothing to read F Others: ………………………………………………………………………… Which of the following text-types you often read outside the classroom? A short stories B poems C dramas D novels How often you read English short stories? II A Very often (i.e every day) B Quite often (i.e once a week) C When I have free time and feel like reading D When my teachers ask me to E Never F Others: ………………………………………………………………………… Which of the following topics are you interested in reading about? (tick all that apply) A Daily life B Relationships (friendship, love, etc) C Natural and animals D People E Social issues (crime, politics, science,etc.) F Others III APPENDIX POST-INTERVENTION QUESTIONNAIRE How you like reading now? A extremely like B moderately like C slightly like D slightly dislike E dislike Give two reasons for your answer: ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… How has your opinion of reading English short stories changed after this project? (Tick all that are true for you) A I come to like reading short stories B I learn more about English grammar C I learn more English words D I find reading English interesting E My opinion of reading English does not change at all Will you continue to find and read English short stories on your own after this project? A Yes B No Give two reasons for your answer: ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… IV APPENDIX INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Do you like reading more after reading the stories that the teacher provided? Why? What are the benefits that reading English stories brought to you? Will you continue to find and read English short stories on your own after this project? Why? V ... short stories to enhance students’ reading motivation: A case of 11th graders at a high school in Lao Cai city? ??, submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of master at the Faculty... factors that demotivated high- school students’ learning of reading English and examined how short stories made their attitudes towards reading changed under the impacts of reading practice Participants... (1981) claimed that generally there are two main reasons for reading which are reading for pleasure and reading for information In the context of language learning, the primary purpose for reading