The readingcomprehension skill is one of the fundamental skills in learning a foreign language as well as is one of the most effective ways to obtain knowledge. However, without the amount of specialized academic knowledge, it accidentally hinders each person from achieving master a language. Especially, for sophomore English major at Ho Chi Minh City Open University, it is an important skill which is paid more attention than other skills because they will have to read English materials related to their future jobs. Therefore, the strengthening of the role of specialized this skill in university has a very important role. The research aims to investigate the readingcomprehension difficulties by sophomore English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University. Then, it would like to find out the reasons for those problems and give some suggestions to reduce their difficulties when reading context materials to get better. Therefore, the author applied the quantitative method and the collecting data instruments like questionnaires used to do the research. A survey questionnaire was done on 60 secondyear students randomly chosen from different classes of English majors. After that, the results of the study have pointed out that students have difficulties in such areas as reading skill problems, language problems and cultural background knowledge that the sophomores encounter when they learn the readingcomprehension skill. From the results, the researcher can work out the right solutions to the problems.
HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHS TOPIC: THE DIFFICULTIES OF READING - COMPREHENSION SKILL OF SOPHOMORE ENGLISH MAJORS AT HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT The reading-comprehension skill is one of the fundamental skills in learning a foreign language as well as is one of the most effective ways to obtain knowledge However, without the amount of specialized academic knowledge, it accidentally hinders each person from achieving master a language Especially, for sophomore English major at Ho Chi Minh City Open University, it is an important skill which is paid more attention than other skills because they will have to read English materials related to their future jobs Therefore, the strengthening of the role of specialized this skill in university has a very important role The research aims to investigate the reading-comprehension difficulties by sophomore English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University Then, it would like to find out the reasons for those problems and give some suggestions to reduce their difficulties when reading context materials to get better Therefore, the author applied the quantitative method and the collecting data instruments like questionnaires used to the research A survey questionnaire was done on 60 second-year students randomly chosen from different classes of English majors After that, the results of the study have pointed out that students have difficulties in such areas as reading skill problems, language problems and cultural background knowledge that the sophomores encounter when they learn the reading-comprehension skill From the results, the researcher can work out the right solutions to the problems ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In order to implement and complete this scientific research project, I have received support, assistance as well as interest and encouragement from many individuals Scientific research is also completed based on reference, learning experiences from relevant research results, books, specialized newspapers of many authors in universities, research organizations, groups Especially, the patient guidance and invaluable support of my teacher and the help, physical and spiritual conditions from friends and family First and foremost, I would like to express special gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Tuan Thanh Nguyen, who came directly instructions and helped with knowledge, materials and methods for me to complete this scientific research topic I truly grateful to him for his ideas, comments and guidance as well as encouragement and constant support Besides, I also wish send my sincere thanks to all my friend who have encouraged me a lot to finish the study and shared me useful information My thanks are also given to sixty students taking part in my research and willingly completed the questionnaires Last but not least, I am happy to acknowledge my family whose support and love during doing this research TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .6 Statement of the Problem .6 Background of the Problem Purpose of the Study Significance of the Study .7 Research Questions Limitation .7 Scope of the Study Summary CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW The Nature of Reading-Comprehension Definition of Reading-Comprehension The importance of reading-comprehension .9 Types of the Reading-Comprehension Skill 10 Skimming 10 Scanning .11 Extensive reading .11 Intensive reading 11 The Difficulties of the Reading-Comprehension Process 12 Reading skill problem 12 Language Problems 12 Cultural background knowledge 13 Summary 13 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 14 Research design .14 Participants .14 Sampling Techniques and Materials 14 Research Procedures 14 Data Collection 15 Data Analysis 15 Reliability and Validity 15 Summary 15 CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS, RESULT AND DISCUSSION .16 Students’ Attitude Towards the Role of Reading 16 The Frequency of Students Practices the Reading-Comprehension Skill .17 Students’ Attitude Towards While Reading Activities 17 The Opinion of Students About Grammatical Structure of Sentences 17 Students’ Activities When Meeting New Words .18 Predicting the Main Idea of the Whole Passage from Keywords 19 Student’s Difficulties in the Reading-Comprehension Process .19 Reading Strategies in the Reading-Comprehension Effectively 20 The Activities Students Improve Their Reading-Comprehension Skill 21 Summary 21 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION 22 REFERENCES 23 APPENDICES 24 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Students’ Attitude Towards the Importance of Reading-Comprehension Skill 16 Figure 2: The Frequency of Students Practices the Reading-Comprehension Skill 17 Figure 3: Opinions About the Grammatical Structure of Sentences While Doing Reading-Comprehension Activities 18 Figure 4: The Students Come Across New Words in the English Reading 18 Figure 5: The Opinion of Students About Predicting the Main Idea 19 Figure 6: The Difficulties of Students Encounter in Reading-Comprehension Process 20 Figure 7: The Strategies That Students Often Apply in Reading 20 Figure 8: The Activities Students Improve Their Reading-Comprehension Skill 21 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In the current context of integration, English is not only just an extremely necessary means of communication, but also gains more of an advantage over those of the same professional level Nevertheless, a sad fact is that English skills of students are still poor and not meet the requirements in order to get a good job after graduation, especially the reading – comprehension skill of sophomore English majors According to Pandian (1997), one of the most important elements and essential tools in English language learning is reading skill It is believed that reading – comprehension skill is a big objection beside other skills This study is identified the difficulties as perceived by the students Statement of the Problem In learning English as a second language in Vietnam, reading-comprehension has always received a great deal of attention Learning in non-English environment, it is easily understandable that readingcomprehension skill is real challenge to the students in these educational institutions that make them consider this skill as a burden when learning foreign languages Reading-comprehension skill presents a dilemma to a lot of students, especially sophomore English majors The more in-depth their learning, the harder it is compared to the beginning of their exposure like freshman These are due to some factors that are worth considering It could be unsuitable learning materials or they make insufficient effort Through this study, I try to figure out the reasons behind these problems and how the student can overcome these difficulties Background of the Problem Even though the principal issue is that reading-comprehension skill is regarded as the most important skill in the academic area, it was not as good as expected by students Not to mention the fact that we know that reading comprehension is an important language skill that should be mastered by students but there are still many students who are vague about the information in the lesson There are still many students who not fully understand what the author means which they want to convey in text They even have difficulty in vocabulary and grammar that make becomes a barrier to acquiring information of students Purpose of the Study According to Goodman (1970), the only goal of reading skill is comprehension That requires students to understand and use the meaning of words proficiently and know how to handle the information content Hence, the study’s purposes not only discover students’ difficulties in reading-comprehension skill but also try to answer some of these questions in this problem Because of the difficulties, sophomore English majors are not interested in learning and practicing this skill that lead to their readingcomprehension skill facing more and more difficulties Thus, the study would like to find out the effective ways to overcome the difficulties through the survey These solutions wish to help the sophomore English majors have much interest and better learning in reading-comprehension skill Significance of the Study The research emphasizes the significance of motivation to the read-comprehension skill It contributes to improving English reading comprehension which can help the sophomore English majors construct new schemata so that they can have a clear understanding of this skill Moreover, the research has been a major contribution to the academic field of English skill improvement Research Questions Base on the statement of the problem mentioned, these questions are constructed: What are the real situations of reading-comprehension skill for sophomore English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University? What are the causes of reading–comprehension’s difficulties? How sophomore English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University improve their readingcomprehension skill? Limitation First and foremost, though there are several unexpected factors in the study process, facing time constraint is inevitable Because the research process is conducted after school time, the expertise is somewhat restricted that causes I could not conduct other methods as classroom observation of a particular student Furthermore, search engines are also limited as well as the lack of resources which may have affect the reliability of results In the process of finding research materials, it had been still difficult to choose the most applicable sources In addition, due to the limitation of scope of the study, I solely focus on the sophomore English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University Thus, the study’ result cannot be generalized and cover all the aspects of difficulties Though the research has the above limitations, I would like the result can contribute to the improvement reading-comprehension skills of sophomore English majors Scope of the Study This study investigated some issues in the reading-comprehension skill for second-year students in English faculty at Ho Chi Minh City Open University, and also the difficulties these students face throughout their studies “Reading-comprehension” is composed of separate skills and abilities, like discerning word -meanings in context It is required for the reader not only to understand what the author wishes to convey but also to contribute his own experiences and thoughts to the matter of understanding It is a broad field and the shortage of reference materials Consequently, the study solely concentrates on exploring common difficulties students get in reading-comprehension skill, not covering the entire issue of reading-comprehension skill as well in order to find the solution for this problem Summary The introduction gave a background of the study of the problem in reading-comprehension skill and achieved the goals of this chapter is that dividing into seven core elements with this chapter’s own purpose Additionally, the introduction briefly covers the theories associated with the study so that the second chapter presented the scientifically theoretical overview on the state of affairs of reading-comprehension skill CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter will present a description of the literature relevant in the study as well as the commonly found difficulties readers of a foreign language are faced with To put it another way, it provides a scientifically theoretical background related to the problem Chapter two starts with a definition of reading-comprehension which is followed by a description of difficulties in the reading comprehension process Besides, the chapter discusses the principles of reader approaches to language learning to highlight the importance of understanding the difficulty of the student in the process of reading comprehension from their perspectives The Nature of Reading-Comprehension Definition of Reading-Comprehension In the process of learning a foreign language, reading-comprehension is one of the basic skills that are really focused It can be considered as the capability to obtain information in the text as adequately as possible According to Wikipedia, the reading-comprehension skill is explained as the ability to process, understand the meaning of the text, and apply knowledge to deduce “Reading comprehension or understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible” Grellet (1981: 3) Bernhardt & James (1987) takes the point that reading comprehension is giving connection to the unknown and the known information Clearly, this skill requires the learner to know how to use syntactic information, graphic information and semantic information to capture the chain of information effectively Although these above opinions of the authors are not nearly the same, they gave an overview of common points The authors all stated their views while also expressing that reading-comprehension is not just about knowing the meaning of the vocabulary or recognizing the grammar of each sentence separately There is little no doubt that it is the student's process of understanding the link of words and the meaning of words related to the context of the whole essay To put it simply, students will be able to connect thought and language, learn how to improve their language in real life as well as apply advanced skills in tests Moreover, through the process of learning reading-comprehension can find the best way to use their grammar skills, use vocabulary correctly The importance of reading-comprehension Scanning Scanning is another tool for speeding up reading Unlike skimming, learners only look for detailed or partial information without reading the entire article when scanning According to Grellet (1981, p.19) in the book Developing Reading Skills states that: “When scanning, we only try to locate specific information and often we not even follow the linearity of the passage to so” This reading strategy is widely used in the reading-comprehension skill In addition, scanning is applied when learners need to search for a specific piece of information such as proper name, data, date, or phrases without knowing the content of the text By scanning, readers mean to glance through the text in order to search for specific information In other words, the students always direct and keep in mind what they are looking for After that orientation is what kind of information, proper nouns or words, dates The more readers can shape specific data, the less time they spend What is more, to enable the student to scan effectively, they need to determine which part of the article according to memory is acquired after the skimming and "scan" once to locate the exact location of the information to be searched Information can be ordered in alphabetical order or chronological order so you can base this on easier identification Extensive reading In general, students learning to read in English rarely read because partly the way reading is approached in the language class Extensive reading is an easy method to approach second language reading that builds their reading speed and fluency This reading strategy also brings many chances to read longer pieces of reading It also depends on their speed and their ability level In fact, extensive reading is good for language development which consists of building vocabulary, understanding grammar, and building the ability reading speed and reading fluency It helps create confidence and motivation that make the learner become an effective user of language Intensive reading Intensive reading is to completely deconstruct a passage and the goal of absorbing vocabulary as much as possible This reading strategy requires readers to have a solid background in all areas and understand the hidden implications behind each essay Intensive reading is reading in detail to fully understand the information that the paragraph or author wants to convey While reading extensively, brings the learner as sophomore English majors a broader perspective of many topics, intensive reading provides them with in-depth particular knowledge Intensive and extended reading have their advantages, but students should know how to combine both styles in tandem to bolster 11 their vocabulary acquisition quickly Therefore, the particular comprehension strategies can be taught and learned and that their conscious use can help to ameliorate their comprehension (national Reading Panel,2000) The Difficulties of the Reading-Comprehension Process Reading-Comprehension in foreign language is an indispensable skill in academics as the English major Several issues that are at the root of hindering directly influenced academic studies, personal growth, and personal success of the students, especially sophomore Reading skill problem According to Anderson (1984), the reason the students cannot read adequately in English is that they cannot read adequately in the native language The interaction between first language and second language reading ability is further clarified by several researchers Reading is a positive skill related to prediction and comprehension If the reading skill is still limited, it will gradually create many problems in academics The sophomore who has the reading ability is poor, they often not know how to use and combine different reading methods or not know how to use appropriate ways to move their eyes from word group to word group Occasionally there will be new words or a new grammatical structure in the essay Depending on the level of reading comprehension, good readers will gain the most knowledge, those with poor reading will get discouraged gradually and not want to keep reading It will gradually become a habit if not improve issues related to reading skills Language Problems Learners have to face different difficulties Firstly, the problem is that they are not familiar with exposure to strange and difficult topics The learners will find the passage extremely challenging and might not have any motivation to learn They may not understand and easily give up during the reading process The second issue is equally important as talking about language difficulties, it is impossible not to mention vocabulary, and it is also the biggest problem in the process of learning English major Specialized vocabularies not only have a lot but also understanding all of them is a difficult problem, even many words are very long and complicated This makes memorizing vocabulary more burdensome Moreover, these words are not used much in everyday life If not used regularly, it is easy to forget Therefore, reading English for specialized courses has become a nightmare for many students 12 In addition, complex and compound sentences, proverbs and idioms, synonyms and antonyms all also create a great problem for the reading-comprehension skill All of them may be ignored or misunderstood in another way incorrectly Cultural background knowledge Apart from the above problem mentioned, cultural knowledge also affects students' reading comprehension ability Carrell (1983) illustrated that the effect of cultural knowledge on the product of comprehension, appealing to the processes of distortion and elaboration to account for the differences between recall of text and the original text Students facing unfamiliar cultural content may mistranslate according to their cultural experience Reading-comprehension is one of the functions of cultural background knowledge From what has been discussed, there are three main factors that affect the difficulty of reading comprehension, including reading skills, linguistic knowledge, cultural background knowledge External issues can be related to difficulties such as reading habits, perspectives, motivation, surroundings and how to be guided Despite any difficult or reason, it always takes effort and perseverance to learn a foreign language or to read any language Summary To sum up, this chapter mainly summarizes the theories, ideas and opinions related to the readingcomprehension skill It provided the relevant literature of the study There are many factors involved in this skill Firstly, the nature of reading-comprehension which includes the definition, the importance and the types of the reading-comprehension skill are explained Besides, chapter two highlights the insights into reading-comprehension difficulties After reviewing the theoretical overview of the readingcomprehension skill, the following chapter will display the methodology and present in detail this study 13 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY As it is indicated in the title, chapter concerns the methodology used to achieve the aims of the study It shows an attempt to explain how the problem is investigated and how particular methods and techniques are applied to the research In more detail, this chapter includes the research design, participants, sampling techniques and materials, research procedures, data collection, data analysis, reliability and validity, and summary Research design The research design is a structure for planning to undertake a particular study This part is fundamentally divided into several categories such as qualitative research and quantitative research This research is a quantitative research that allows quantifying the data obtained and generalizing the results from the samples selected in this research According to Martyn Shuttleworth (Mar 7, 2008) “Quantitative research design is an excellent way of finalizing results and proving or disproving a hypothesis The structure has not changed for centuries, so is standard across many scientific fields and disciplines” Participants This research was carried out with the participants of 60 second-year students of English majors These students aged 20, both female and male The subjects of the research were selected at random and from different classes when the participants were in the third semester of their academic year 2020-2021 at Ho Chi Minh City Open University Sampling Techniques and Materials The research is conducted by a survey method that allows the researcher to get the necessary data in a certain amount of time The questionnaire was used in English The questionnaire includes a personal information section of participants and a questionnaire about the difficulties of the reading-comprehension skill with multiple-choice questions Since there are too many individuals in a population, it is necessary to obtain a specific number for this study using sampling techniques Because there is a need for a fair mix of English majoring sophomores from different classes, the simple random sampling technique was used to collect the 50 subjects in this study Research Procedures The following steps were taken during the research process The very first, and the most important step in research, the author will clarify the research question The research problem is the difficulty in reading comprehension of second-year students and how to fix this problem The next step, the research proposal is the activity of asking research questions and consulting with a supervisor This step ensures the author and supervisor agree with the research purpose and resolution solution 14 Research design strategy is the third step that contains the purpose, time frame, scope and environment Besides that, it has data collection design and sampling design In addition, data collection is a step done via a google form, the participants' information is aggregated through excel application What is more, the fifth step is data analysis and interpretation Data analysis includes analyzing statistics obtained from excel files, analyzing as well as exploring relationships between data Finally, the last step is research report which including an executive summary, an over review of the research, an over review of the research, the problem’s background, literature summary, methods and procedures and conclusions, a section on implementation strategies for the recommendations Data Collection The questionnaire was sent to the second-year students of the English language via a google form besides, explaining what to expect in the questionnaire and guiding participants to answer to ensure all questions are accomplished Information gathered on reading comprehension problems and how to improve this skill of second-year student's English language at Ho Chi Minh City Open University When data collection was completed, the data analysis was also initiated Survey questionnaire results will reflect the issue of students in reading-comprehension skills Data Analysis The goal of the research is to answer research questions using the questionnaire statistics regarding the percentage obtained from the responses and collated in the form of tables, graphs and figures to make the data presentation meaningful The data were analyzed according to the research questions posed earlier in the study Data obtained from the section of the surveyed people via the google form application and encoded in an Excel spreadsheet before analysis Data analysis is about the importance of students' reading comprehension skills, problems, and problem-solving Reliability The reliability of the study shown by the consistency of the results over time The subjects of study are both second-year students majoring in English with almost equal capacity from different classes in the third semester The writer maintained the validity by honoring the information provided As a result, the conclusion of this research would be verified and could be applied widely for the identical subject groups Summary This study may be replicable as it serves the research purpose only In this chapter, there are a few points relating to the difficulties of reading - comprehension skill of sophomore English majors at Ho Chi Minh city Open University In the next chapter, the collected data would be analyzed thoroughly 15 CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS, RESULT AND DISCUSSION This chapter will be presented systematically and accurately survey results to address the research objectives The rate from the participants was 100% because the participants gave good answers in the online distributed questionnaire Analyzing this data is a statistical process in which raw data will be prepared and the structured information will be encoded in an Excel spreadsheet before analysis In reporting the results and data analysis of the research, the results reported base on the topic in research problems that including what the difficulties encountered by second-year students English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University, what the strategies of learning the reading-comprehension skill applied by second-year students English major and how to improve this issue Students’ Attitude Towards the Role of Reading To research more clearly the opinion of sophomore English majors, the question in the questionnaire was designed to find out the students’ assessment on the importance of the reading-comprehension skill The result of Question was presented in Figure 2% 98% Important Unimportant Figure 1: Students’ Attitude Towards the Importance of Reading-Comprehension Skill It can be seen clearly in the above Figure 1, most of the students in the survey had a positive attitude towards reading 98 % of them find reading very important Meanwhile, only % of them did not highly appreciate the important role of this skill However, this figure showed that the majority of sophomore English majors agreed that reading was important and necessary in their learning English with a lot of fields in life Therefore, the reading comprehension skill is one of the essential skills in learning English 16 The Frequency of Students Practices the Reading-Comprehension Skill Reading, despite being one of the four skills of language learning, is one of the skills that is most often neglected by learners The chart below showed the amount of time second-year student English majors spend on this vital skill 3.30% 20% 23.30% Every day Every week Sometimes Only in class 53.30% Figure 2: The Frequency of Students Practices the Reading-Comprehension Skill When surveying the time students spent on reading comprehension, there were some differences between the number of hard-working students and the number of non-hard working students About 53.3% of students sometimes spent time on this skill 23.3% of students said that they learned this skill every week and only 3.3% spent time studying each day The result proved that the majority of students were less interested in improving skills by practicing them every day Even up to 20% of students only study in class, they did not spend time learning this skill at home Students’ Attitude Towards While Reading Activities The Opinion of Students About Grammatical Structure of Sentences To have more details about the attitude of the students in this skill, the third question was designed The result was shown in the below figure 17 33% 67% Bother Not bother Figure 3: Opinions About the Grammatical Structure of Sentences While Doing ReadingComprehension Activities The figure showed a surprising result which was very contrary to the original assessment In spite of the grammatical structure of sentences that boring the learners, it still had 33% of the sophomore English majors not bothering them The grammatical structure of sentences was not as boring as many people thought Nevertheless, finding from Figure indicated that a large number of students (67%) bother with the grammatical structure of sentences while doing reading-comprehension activities For them, learning readingcomprehension might be neither interesting nor boring To sum up, the grammatical structure was a part of this skill in the learning process and it created difficulty for students Students’ Activities When Meeting New Words The below figure has shown the ways that the learners often when they come across new words in the English reading 78% 50% 22% SKIP THE WORD TURN TO DICTIONARIES GUESS THE MEANING IN CONTEXT Figure 4: The Students Come Across New Words in the English Reading 18 When unfamiliar words or structures appear, the number of students who usually tried to figure out the meaning of the new words in English reading took 78% However, 50% of them turned to dictionaries or their friends for the meanings or explanations It is not easy to recognize complex or specialized vocabulary without first understanding Surprisingly, only 22% of students admitted that skipping the words from the context Predicting the Main Idea of the Whole Passage from Keywords Finding the main idea of the whole passage requires you to use your observations to make an inference that, like keywords or a topic sentence, encompasses the whole passage It may take a little detective work 16.70% 83.30% Yes No Figure 5: The Opinion of Students About Predicting the Main Idea The very noticeable thing that can be realized from the table was that 50 students (83.8%) admitted that they often predicted the main idea of the whole context from keywords It was surprising to discover that a certain number of students (16.7%) did not that The reason for this can be the fact that this readingcomprehension skill was not very beneficial to them in learning English Predicting the main idea of the whole context from keywords should be undertaken prior to students completing activities to locate the main idea in a text The attitudes towards reading activities play an important part in improving a student's language skills Students can cultivate or reflect on what has been read and relate it to understanding In short, the viewpoint when reading contributes greatly to the development of the reading-comprehension skill Student’s Difficulties in the Reading-Comprehension Process In order to find ways to improve reading comprehension skills for second-year English majors, the first thing was to find out the reasons for the difficulty of learning this skill The chart below may be a problem that students encountered in the learning process 19 Reading skill Language Cultural background knowledge 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Figure 6: The Difficulties of Students Encounter in Reading-Comprehension Process Figure represented the problems that students were facing when dealing with reading tasks Actually, there are several elements that can be counted on The most difficult problem was the limited capacity of background knowledge There were 34 students in the survey (56.7%) who blamed the lack of cultural background knowledge on the topic of the reading text The next one (55%) was afraid of language while doing the reading-comprehension skill Additionally, they assumed that if they experienced lots of new or difficult vocabulary and grammatical structures from the text, their motivation for reading would surely be decreased 24 out of 60 students (40%) was the lack of appropriate reading strategies It is obvious that students cannot reading tasks easily if they not have appropriate reading strategies Therefore, it is very important for teachers to suggest their students essential reading strategies needed for each kind of reading task Reading Strategies in the Reading-Comprehension Effectively Comprehension strategy instruction help students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension On the contrary, applying inappropriate reading strategies will make students spend much time on unnecessary information they not need to look for The survey result has shown that the strategies that students often apply in reading 80.00% 60.00% 40.00% 20.00% 0.00% Skimming Scanning Extensive Reading Intensive Reading Figure 7: The Strategies That Students Often Apply in Reading It is easy to see from Figure that the most useful strategies for the students were the scanning strategy It is pleasing to see that these students seem to have appropriate the reading skill when finding out 20 specific information 77% of the sophomore English majors affirmed that However, 55% of them used skimming in reading learning Both extensive reading and intensive reading had the student equal selection (28%) After surveying, the scanning method had been applied by many students as well as skimming Although knowing the differences between the strategies is undeniably useful, the habit of reading every word may make some of us uncomfortable to change Extensive reading and intensive reading was these reading strategies that few students used, possibly because they had not had much access to this strategy when studying The Activities Students Improve Their Reading-Comprehension Skill In increasing the students’ comprehension, the improvement activities as the main “tool” in this research Below there was a figure that showed the students choose the way to develop this skill 100.00% 83.30% 80.00% 70% 60.00% 43.30% 46.70% 40.00% 30% 20.00% 0.00% Improve vocabulary Identify main ideas Summarize what you read Read more Be a detective with context clues Figure 8: The Activities Students Improve Their Reading-Comprehension Skill As can be seen from Figure 8, vocabulary was selected the most in student improvement, accounting for 83.3% Meanwhile, read more also accounts for 70% of students interested They supposed that in order to improve reading comprehension skills, it is necessary to have a wide vocabulary and good reading skills The next way that many students (46.7%) thought to summarize what you read was a motivating way to ameliorate learning better Furthermore, 43.3% of the students affirmed that identifying main ideas was an effective way of reading and 30% of them supposed that being a detective with context clues Summary In conclusion, chapter reported some statistics and analyses related to the research topic in graphic and figure format It is very clear from above the data analysis, results and discussion that sophomore English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University have plenty of difficulties in learning reading-comprehension, students’ attitude towards the role of reading, their attitude toward while reading activities, the frequency of students practices, reading strategies and the way to improve this skill Chapter concludes the study, discusses the conclusions and makes recommendations for practice and further research 21 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION Chapter will establish conclusions based on the findings of the study and in accordance with the research objectives established in chapter one Aside from conclusions, this section will transfer with some suggestions recommendations are also established To put it in a nutshell, the reading-comprehension skill is vital not only in language learning but also in daily life Nonetheless, sophomore English majors seem to have problems with reading-comprehension, the research objective was achieved and the research question was answered via the collection of data and findings This has given an insight into the difficulties faced by the students in reading comprehension The time they spend on studying themselves is too little to improve the skill, the inappropriate strategies of the students would be a hindrance for their reading-comprehension skill and lacking of background knowledge on the topic of the reading text These are the most common problems collected from learner This research has completed discovering the frequent problems which the sophomore English majors have to experience in reading comprehension Based on verifiable truth and figures, a number of strategies are also proposed to boost them with better reading comprehension To validate what has been written above, my ideas about solutions to enhance the reading-comprehension skill of the students are demonstrated First and foremost, they should spend much more time practicing The students should read a variety of topics in order to get familiar with them Hence, the background knowledge will be enriched as well as the skill because the questionnaire survey shows that the level of students lacking cultural knowledge is relatively high In addition, language is always a substantial part of practicing reading, they need to have a suitable learning strategy to improve their language skills language Moreover, many students ignore reading skills in the learning process These things they require know how to combine appropriate reading strategies to each kind of reading text in order to get the best result Because of the limitation in this study, all of aspects of the research could not be covered Besides, this research only focuses on difficulties for only sophomore English majors in order to assist them advance their reading-comprehension skill For the further studies, the authors should invite more participants and the data collection method to get better results To sum up, the research has been finished under guiding of supervisor and self-effort in spite of the research cannot avoid to the limitation Furthermore, any comments and criticism will be highly appreciated for better further study 22 REFERENCES Alderson, J.C & Urquhart, A.H (1984) Reading in a foreign language Essex: Longman Group Limited Avivit Ben-Aharon (2020) What Is the Importance of Reading Comprehension After School? In Reading Comprehension Retrieved from: https://greatspeech.com/what-is-the-importance-of-readingcomprehension-after-school/ Bernhardt, E B., & James, C J (1987) The Teaching and Testing of Comprehension in Foreign Language Learning Carrell, P L (1983) Some issues in studying the role of schemata, or background knowledge, in second language comprehension Reading in a Foreign Language, 1, 81–92 Goodman, K S (1970) Behind the Eye: What Happens in Reading Grellet, F (1981) Developing Reading Skills Cambridge: CUP Martyn Shuttleworth (Mar 7, 2008) Quantitative Research Design Retrieved from: https://explorable.com/quantitative-research-design National Reading Panel (2000) Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction Washington, DC: National Academic Press Pandian, A (1997) Reading in Malaysia Bangi: Penerbit UKM "What is Reading Comprehension?" Reading Worksheets, Spelling, Grammar, Comprehension, Lesson Plans 2008-05-29 Retrieved from: https://web.archive.org/web/20160509110054/http://www.k12reader.com/what-is-reading-comprehension/ 23 APPENDICES Survey Questionnaires THE DIFFICULTIES OF READING - COMPREHENSION SKILL OF SOPHOMORE ENGLISH MAJORS AT HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY This questionnaire is designed for research purposes The survey discovers the difficulties in the reading-comprehension skill of sophomore English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University The information collected will not be used for any other uses I will appreciate your cooperation and help Personal information Full name: Gender: - Male - Female Survey Questionnaires What you think of your English reading skills? - Important - Not important What difficulties you encounter in reading-comprehension? - Reading skill - Language - Background knowledge Do you bother with the grammatical structure of sentences while doing readingcomprehension class? - Yes -No What you when you come across new words in the English reading? - Skip the word - Turn to dictionaries - Guess the meaning in context 24 Which reading strategies you often use in the reading-comprehension effectively? - Skimming ( Reading a text quickly to get the main points and skip over the detail) - Scanning ( Reading a text quickly in order to find specific piece of information) - Extensive reading( Rapid reading of large quantities of materials or longer reading for general understanding) - Intensive reading( Reading in detail with specific learning aims and tasks) How often you practice reading-comprehension skill? -Every day -Every week - Sometimes - Only in class Do you often predict the main idea of the whole passage from key words? - Yes - No What you to improve your reading- comprehension skill? - Improve vocabulary - Identify main ideas - Summarize what you read - Read more - Be a detective with context clues Thank you very much for doing this survey! 25 ... sophomore English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University? What are the causes of reading–comprehension’s difficulties? How sophomore English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University improve... MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY This questionnaire is designed for research purposes The survey discovers the difficulties in the reading-comprehension skill of sophomore English majors at Ho Chi Minh. .. family First and foremost, I would like to express special gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Tuan Thanh Nguyen, who came directly instructions and helped with knowledge, materials and methods for