CHAPTER 2: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CURRENT SITUATION OF
2.5. Data Collection, Findings and Discussion
2.5.2. Data analysis and discussion
2.5.2.1. Question 1: Pie chart 1: Students’ attitudes towards the role of reading English to their learning and their future career
As we see from this pie chart, 57% of the first year students confirm that reading English reading play a very important role to their learning English and their future career, 40%
find reading English important, 2% say that it isn’t very important to study reading and only 1% underrate the importance of reading English and his career in the future.
Obviously, these figures tell us how important of reading English for students, especially for the first year students at VTC
1%
2%
40%
57%
not important not very important important
very important
2.5.2.2. Questions (2-5): chart 2: Students’ attitude towards the reading text in Lifeline- Elementary book.
The students’ attitude towards the reading text in Lifeline- Elementary book is analyzed as the result of figures shown as chart 2. Over half of students find the reading texts interesting (62%). Only very a small number of students state that the reading texts in this book are very interesting and occupied only 1.5%. Meanwhile, the percentage of students’
thought of reading texts boring and not very interesting is nearly equal, 20% say that it is not very interesting and 16.5% is boring. When being asked for the difficulty of the reading texts ( Are there many unknown words in the reading texts?), 65.7% answer some, 32.3% find there are many and only 2% state no new words. Moreover, students are very anxious (32%), nervous (15.7%) and tired (45.2) of reading the texts with many new words and only have a little students feel exciting when they are faced up with the texts included many unknown words.
As for the length of the reading texts, a large number of students suppose it is moderate (61%). But not a small number (29%) consider the reading texts short. A very small
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70%
a 1.5 32.3 32 2
b 20 65.7 7.1 61
c 62 2 15.7 8
d 16.5 0 45.2 29
Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5
number of students choose the option that the reading texts are very long and the rest 8%
of students decide they are long.
The figures indicate that it is acceptable to use this document because of its structure and interesting reading texts are suitable for first year students. However, it is not a very perfect book because there are not small numbers of students who feel the reading texts boring, short and it consists of many new words. Therefore, beside the main book is being used, teachers should give extra documents as well as other activities to develop students’
reading skill. And it is extensive reading.
2.5.2.3. (Questions 6-13): Students’ activities in reading
2.5.2.3.1. (Questions 6-8): chart 3: Students’ activities in pre-reading
Figures shown in chart 3 tell us about the students’ activities before reading. Most of students pay attention too much to the questions of the texts with the highest percentage (54.3%) and only a small amount of students predict the content of the reading texts (4.3%). 31.4% say they look at the headings and title for each section and think about the meaning of each and seriously, there are 10% students who do nothing before their reading. The result is worse when they are asked “Before reading, how often do you predict the main content of the text?”. 75.8% answer they are rarely, 10% sometimes, 8.5%
31.4
5.7 9
54.3
10
73
4.3
75.8
13.3
10 8.5
3.3 1.4 0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Question 6 Question 7 Question 8
%
a b c d e
never and a small number (5.7%) say they are often. Obviously, students are lacked of background knowledge of reading. They do not realize that predicting the content before reading help them read better and faster and certainly, they are bad at reading. In addition to students’ activities in pre-reading, the survey question “How can you guess the main ideas of the text?” is given to students and get the result as, a large number of students read the texts carefully to guess the main ideas (73%), depend on the first and the last sentence of the text (9%), 13.3% base on the picture and headline to find main ideas, and a very small number of students use the method of scanning and skimming. The percentage of surveying seems to be equal, 3.3% scanning and 1.4% skimming.
2.5.2.3.2. (Questions 9-10): chart 4: Students’ activities in while-reading
This chart indicates that a large number of students (62%) read the text and translate sentence by sentence. 30.9% move their eyes sentence by sentence to find out new words and structures. 4.7% only read the text attentively from the beginning to the end for detail and a small number of students read the first and the last sentence of each paragraph in the reading text.
4.7
48
30.9
25
2.4
22 62
5 0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Question 9 Question 10
%
a b c d
Being asked “What do you often do when you are faced up with unknown words in your while- reading?”. Most of students (48%) say they use the dictionary for meanings or explanations. For guessing the meaning of the word basing on the meaning of sentences (25%) and asking their teacher help for meaning of new words and structures (22%) are nearly equal. Only 5% do not know what to do and ignore them all when unknown words and structures appear in the reading texts.
From result of surveying, we can draw out the conclusion that students depend on too much on the dictionary and their teachers’ help in their reading texts. This is also the reason why we need to change the teaching method as well as apply advances in reading to improve students’ reading skill.
2.5.2.3.3. (Questions 11-13): chart 5. Students’ activities in post-reading
From the figures of chart 5, we can see clearly that almost students ask their teacher to explain whenever they read and do not understand the text (54%). 41% discuss and ask their partners to find out difficulties then try to understand the texts. However, there are students who do not know what to do (4.7%) and they are tired of reading, then stop reading at once (3.3%). Besides, students do not have the habit of summarizing the text
3.3 1.4
11 41
20
14 54
71.4 71
4.7 7.2
4 0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Question 11 Question 12 Question 13
%
a b c d
after reading although this skill is deeply necessary for them to get better understand and doing exercises after reading with the highest percentage 71.4%. Only a very small number of students (1.4%) often use this skill, 20% say sometimes and 7.2% never.
The above chart also showed students’ preferences for different types of reading exercises.
The reading exercise type that most students like is “true/ false” (71%) because maybe, this is a kind of exercise that students do not have to think a lot and the questions are quite short, clear and easy to answer. Comprehension and multiple choices are popular reading exercises for students with 11% choosing comprehension questions and 14% multiple choices, the rest 4% like word formation exercise.
On the whole, from these discussions, we can realize that students dislike reading anything that requires their critical thinking. Especially, teachers may have glimpsed the idea of follow-up activities in their mind but they do not know what activities should be used to activate their students to work further. They often apply available teaching method in their background knowledge to teach reading skill. They rarely access to modern techniques to help their students widen reading knowledge so that to develop students’ reading skill, one of new ways, ER is useful for teachers to apply to their lessons at VTC.
2.5.2.3.4. (Question 14-20): chart 6: Teachers’ activities towards their students in the reading lesson.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
a 10 68 79 55 5 5 11.4
b 21.4 1 2 40 22 90 31
c 41.5 31 14 5 49 5 50
Q 14 Q15 Q16 Q 17 Q 18 Q 19 Q 20
First of all, basing on the analyzed figures in above chart 6, we can recognize that most of the teachers create the students’ attention by scanning the text and writing new words and structures on the board (41.5% students say that). 10% is equal to 5 students who state their teachers ask them to look at the headings and title for each section and think about the meaning of each before reading. And a number of students (21.4%) suppose they are asked to look at the pictures and think about the meaning before they go ahead, also 27.1%
express their teachers give a brief introduction to the text before starting reading. These results imply that most of teachers apply the traditional way of teaching English reading by presenting new words and structures on the board. Some of them try to give other ways to motivate students’ reading but it is not enough to help their students improve reading skills.
The result of surveying in question 15 tells the teachers’ activities often do when their students have difficulties in understanding the text. A large number of students (68%) claim when they can not understand the content of the texts, their teachers give them new words and structures explanation. Even, the teachers also translate the texts into Vietnamese for students occupied 31%. Also astonishingly, only a very small number of students are asked to predict the content of the texts by their teachers (1%).
In question 16, to help students cover all meaning of the texts, their teachers summarize the texts by themselves (79%) instead of requiring their students do that. 14% students are given exercises following the content of the texts and only 5% are ordered to retell the main content of the texts.
Clearly, the teachers have attempted to help their students understand what should be done to get a good reading comprehension but what they do indicates that teacher-centered approach is still widely used at VTC. Moreover, the teachers translate the texts into Vietnamese to carry out the students’ difficulties in reading is still popular (31% in question 15), in question 17, 55% often, 40% sometimes and only 5% seldom.
Question 18 was design to find out how many percentage of extensive reading which the teachers apply to their students. And these figures above chart 6 show that teachers are not well aware of the importance of extensive reading or more exactly, they do not recognize that apart from the course book ( Lifelines- Elementary), they need to have other materials
to motivate their students as well as improve their reading skill. Of 210 students questioned, 22% answered they sometimes have extensive reading, 49% rarely, 24% never and only a small number of students (5%) say they are often.
Obviously, the application of extensive reading in teaching English reading at VTC hasn’t accessed and become popular. This is a shortcoming because teachers must be those who encourage their students’ passion in reading by extensive materials as a kind of game can have mighty power to get students involved or short stories, novels are the best documents that make students much interested in English reading.
With the aims of finding the students’ attention to reading lessons as well as to the teachers’ teaching methods in their reading texts, question 19 and 20 are given to students.
Most of students answer that they sometimes (90%) keep their teachers’ ways of teaching reading and only remember just little (50%). The percentage of students say they often and seldom are equivalent, 5% often, 5% seldom. The most sadness is that there are 7.6%
students do not remember anything that their teacher taught them after the reading lessons.