The effect of the kwl strategy on vietnamese fifth grade students’ reading comprehension at vstar school

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY -∞0∞ LE THI THAO VY THE EFFECT OF THE KWL STRATEGY ON VIETNAMESE FIFTH-GRADE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION AT VSTAR SCHOOL MASTER THESIS TEACHING ENGLISH TO SPEAKERS OF OTHER LANGUAGES HO CHI MINH CITY, 2020 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY -∞0∞ LE THI THAO VY THE EFFECT OF THE KWL STRATEGY ON VIETNAMESE FIFTH-GRADE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION AT VSTAR SCHOOL Major: Teaching English to speakers of other languages Major code: 60140111 MASTER THESIS TEACHING ENGLISH TO SPEAKERS OF OTHER LANGUAGES Supervisor: Nguyen Thi Thanh Ha (PhD.) HO CHI MINH CITY, 2020 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION ACKNOWLEDGEMENT It would have been impossible for me to complete my thesis paper without the contributions of the following people First and foremost, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Thi Thanh Ha for the continuous support of my MA study and research, for her immense knowledge and persistent help Without her guidance, my thesis paper would not have been realized Besides my supervisor, I would like to pay my special regards to all the lecturers and friends on the MA course at Ho Chi Minh City Open University for their thoughtful advice and support In addition, I wish to show my gratitude to all my colleagues at VStar School for their support and encouragement Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge the great support and love of my beloved family and best friends This paper would not have been possible without their warm encouragement ii EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION iii ABSTRACT The aim of the paper was to examine how the use of the Know - Want to Know Learned (KWL) strategy affected fifth-graders’ reading comprehension at VStar School in Ho Chi Minh City In order to achieve the aim of the study, the researcher employed a quantitative approach with a two-group quasi-experimental pretestposttest design The sample of the study included 50 students of two fifth-grade classes (N=25 for each class) which were conveniently chosen from 270 fifthgraders at VStar School One class was randomly chosen to be the experimental class and the other class was the control class While the experimental class was taught with the KWL strategy, the control class was taught with a regular teaching method The instruments were composed of a questionnaire, a pretest and a posttest The questionnaire was used to record the participants’ English background with the aim to control some extraneous variables that could impact the research outcomes The pretest and posttest were employed to figure out the influence of the KWL strategy on the participants’ reading comprehension The research results indicated statistically significant differences in reading comprehension of the experimental class between the pretest and the posttest with better results found in the posttest Additionally, there were also statistically significant differences between the control class and the experimental class after the application of the KWL strategy Based on the findings, some recommendations were suggested to teachers of English, students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) and researchers having interest in the topic Keywords: reading comprehension, the KWL strategy EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP .i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF FIGURES .vii LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS x Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study 1.2 The Statement of the Problem 1.3 Research Questions 1.4 Significance of the Study 1.5 Definitions of Terms 1.6 Scope of the Study 1.7 Summary of the Chapter 1.8 Organization of the Study Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Reading and Reading Comprehension 2.2 Schemata Theory and Reading Comprehension 10 2.3 Metacognition and Metacognitive Strategies 13 2.4 Metacognition and Reading Comprehension 13 2.5 The KWL Strategy 15 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION v 2.6 The KWL Strategy and Reading Comprehension 17 2.7 Research on Impact of the KWL Strategy on Learners’ Reading Comprehension 18 2.8 Impact of other Factors on Reading Comprehension 22 2.9 Conceptual framework 23 2.10 Summary of the Chapter 24 Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY 26 3.1 Study Design 26 3.2 Research Site 27 3.3 Population and Sample 27 3.4 Instruments 28 3.4.1 Questionnaire 28 3.4.2 Pretest and posttest 31 3.5 Validity and Reliability 33 3.5.1 Internal validity 33 3.5.2 External validity 34 3.5.3 Content validity 34 3.5.4 Construct validity 35 3.5.5 Reliability 35 3.6 Procedures 36 3.7 Data Analysis 40 Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 43 4.1 Findings 43 4.1.1 Questionnaire analysis 43 4.1.2 Pretest and posttest analysis 45 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION vi 4.2 Discussion 55 4.2.1 Students’ activation of schemata 56 4.2.2 Students’ purpose-setting for reading 58 4.2.3 Students’ reflection 60 4.2.4 Summary of the discussion 60 Chapter 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 62 5.1 Summary of the Study 62 5.2 Conclusions 62 5.3 Limitations 63 5.4 Recommendations 63 REFERENCES 66 APPENDICES 75 Appendix A 75 Appendix B 78 Appendix C 83 Appendix D 88 Appendix E 92 Appendix F 108 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 94 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 95 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 96 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 97 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 98 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 99 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION Posttest 100 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 101 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 102 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 103 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 104 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 105 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 106 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 107 EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 108 Appendix F KWL Chart K (What I know) W (What I Want to know) L (What I Learned) ... best of my knowledge, only one study EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION was conducted on the effect of the KWL strategy on the reading comprehension of primary -school students (Burns,... let learners use the strategy as a learning strategy on their own EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION 17 2.6 The KWL Strategy and Reading Comprehension The KWL strategy is believed... comprehension, the relation between schemata and reading comprehension, the relation between metacognition and reading comprehension, and the KWL strategy and its effect on EFFECT OF KWL STRATEGY