Tài liệu How to improve reading skills for students at an duong high school

BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC DÂN LẬP HẢI PHÒNG ------------------------------- ISO 9001 :2015 KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP NGÀNH: NGÔN NGỮ ANH Sinh viên: Đặng Thị Trang Anh Giảng viên hướng dẫn: TS Trần Thị Ngọc Liên HẢI PHÒNG - 2019 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC DÂN LẬP HẢI PHÒNG ----------------------------------- HOW TO IMPROVE READING SKILLS FOR STUDENTS AT AN DUONG HIGH SCHOOL KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP ĐẠI HỌC HỆ CHÍNH QUY Ngành: Ngôn Ngữ Anh Sinh viên: Đặng Thị Trang Anh Lớp: NA1804 Giảng viên hướng dẫn: TS Trần Thị Ngọc Liên HAI PHONG – 2019 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC DÂN LẬP HẢI PHÒNG -------------------------------------- NHIỆM VỤ ĐỀ TÀI TỐT NGHIỆP Sinh viên: Đặng Thị Trang Anh Mã SV: 1412751122 Lớp: NA1804 Ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Tên đề tài: school. How to improve reading skills for students at An Duong high NHIỆM VỤ ĐỀ TÀI 1. Nội dung và các yêu cầu cần giải quyết trong nhiệm vụ đề tài tốt nghiệp (về lý luận, thực tiễn, các số liệu cần tính toán và các bản vẽ). …………………………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………………………….. 1. Các số liệu cần thiết để thiết kế, tính toán. …………………………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………………………….. 2. Địa điểm thực tập tốt nghiệp. …………………………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………………………….. CÁN BỘ HƯỚNG DẪN ĐỀ TÀI TỐT NGHIỆP Người hướng dẫn thứ nhất: Họ và tên: Trần Thị Ngọc Liên Học hàm, học vị: Tiến sĩ Cơ quan công tác: Trường Đại học Dân lập Hải Phòng Nội dung hướng dẫn: How to improve reading skills for students at An Duong high school. Người hướng dẫn thứ hai: Họ và tên:............................................................................................. Học hàm, học vị:................................................................................... Cơ quan công tác:................................................................................. Nội dung hướng dẫn:............................................................................ Đề tài tốt nghiệp được giao ngày… tháng ... năm 2019 Yêu cầu phải hoàn thành xong trước ngày… tháng… năm 2019 Đã nhận nhiệm vụ ĐTTN Sinh viên Đặng Thị Trang Anh Đã giao nhiệm vụ ĐTTN Người hướng dẫn Trần Thị Ngọc Liên Hải Phòng, ngày … tháng ... năm ... Hiệu trưởng GS.TS.NGƯT Trần Hữu Nghị CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Độc lập - Tự do - Hạnh phúc PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT CỦA GIẢNG VIÊN HƯỚNG DẪN TỐT NGHIỆP Họ và tên giảng viên: .......................................................................................... Đơn vị công tác: ................................................................................................. Họ và tên sinh viên: ................................... Chuyên ngành: .............................. Nội dung hướng dẫn: ......................................................................................... .............................................................................................................................. 1. Tinh thần thái độ của sinh viên trong quá trình làm đề tài tốt nghiệp .............................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................. 2. Đánh giá chất lượng đồ án/ khóa luận (so với nội dung yêu cầu đã đề ra trong nhiệm vụ Đ.T.T.N trên các mặt lý luận, thực tiễn, tính toán số liệu…) ............................................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................ 3. Ý kiến của giảng viên hướng dẫn tốt nghiệp Được bảo vệ Không được bảo vệ Điểm hướng dẫn Hải Phòng, ngày … tháng … năm ...... Giảng viên hướng dẫn (Ký và ghi rõ họ tên) QC20-B19 CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT CỦA GIẢNG VIÊN CHẤM PHẢN BIỆN Họ và tên giảng viên: ............................................................................................. Đơn vị công tác: ..................................................................................................... Họ và tên sinh viên: ..................................... Chuyên ngành: ............................. Đề tài tốt nghiệp: ................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... 1. Phần nhận xét của giáo viên chấm phản biện ..................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... 2. Những mặt còn hạn chế ..................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... 3. Ý kiến của giảng viên chấm phản biện Được bảo vệ Không được bảo vệ Điểm hướng dẫn Hải Phòng, ngày … tháng … năm … Giảng viên chấm phản biện (Ký và ghi rõ họ tên) QC20-B19 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the process of doing this study, I have received useful help from my teachers, my friends and my family. First of all, I wish to acknowledge my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Mrs. Tran Thi Ngoc Lien, Ph.D who has help me much in choosing the title of this study and critical feedback throughout the research, without which my research could not been completed. My sincere thanks are also sent to all the teachers of English department at Haiphong Private University for their lectures in which the knowledge has help me accomplish this task. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my students in class12A6 and English teachers at An Duong high school for their participation and assistance without which this study could not have been successful. Last but not least, I am really in debt to my family and my friends for their all useful help and great encouragement during the time I has done this paper. i TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................... ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS............................................................................ iv LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................. v LIST OF CHARTS............................................................................................. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................... 1 1.1 Rationale for the study .............................................................................. 1 1.2 Aims of the study ........................................................................................ 1 1.3 Scope of the study ....................................................................................... 2 1.4 Method of the study ................................................................................... 2 1.5 Design of the study ..................................................................................... 2 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................... 4 2.1 The nature of reading comprehension ..................................................... 4 2.1.1: What is reading? ................................................................................... 4 2.1.2: Type of reading ..................................................................................... 4 2.1.2: Definition of reading comprehension ................................................... 6 2.2: Reading strategies ..................................................................................... 7 2.3: Challenges to reading comprehension .................................................... 8 2.4: Reading Comprehension at high school ............................................... 11 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ................................................................... 12 3.1: Descriptions of the participants............................................................. 12 3.1.1: The background of ADHS .................................................................. 12 3.1.2 The students ......................................................................................... 12 3.2: Data collection instruments ................................................................... 12 3.2.1 Tests ..................................................................................................... 12 3.2.2 Questionnaires...................................................................................... 13 3.3: Data collection procedures ..................................................................... 13 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ............................................. 14 4.1. Findings from test ................................................................................... 14 4.1.1. Pre-test results ..................................................................................... 14 4.1.2. Post-test results ................................................................................... 15 4.2 Questionnaire results ............................................................................... 17 ii 4.3. Summary .................................................................................................. 22 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION ................................... 23 5.1. Conclusion................................................................................................ 23 5.2. Suggestion ................................................................................................ 23 REFERENCE .................................................................................................... 25 APPENDIX 1 ..................................................................................................... 27 APPENDIX 2 ..................................................................................................... 32 APPENDIX 3 ..................................................................................................... 38 APPENDIX 4 ..................................................................................................... 39 APPENDIX 5 ..................................................................................................... 41 APPENDIX 6 ..................................................................................................... 43 iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ADHS: An Duong High School CC: Control Class EC: Experiment Class L2: Second Language iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Pre-test result......................................................................................... Table 2: Post-test results ..................................................................................... Table 3: Student's feeling about learning a reading skill .................................... Table 4: Student’s attitudes toward reading skills .............................................. Table 5: Students’ areas of difficulties................................................................ Table 6: Difficulties in reading skills .................................................................. Table 7: Students’ ways of reading text .............................................................. Table 8: Students’ understand about the strategies of reading comprehension texts ..................................................................................................................... v LIST OF CHARTS Chart 1: Pre-test result ......................................................................................... Chart 2: Post-test result ....................................................................................... Chart 3: Comparison between pre-test and post-test .......................................... Chart 4: Student’s attitudes toward reading skills .............................................. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study Reading is a basic skill that is closely related to other skills such as writing, speaking, and listening. Students are required to read lots and understand the reading material to achieve a better result in the learning process. According to Grabe and Stoller (2002), reading can be taught as a way to draw information from the text and to form an interpretation of that information. It means reading is also a gateway for students to get information and knowledge in the educational process. Moreover, reading skill is also useful in other fields of science; for example, when students have to study information technology subject or find out materials involved tourists, history, even Math or chemistry in English. Students may read to gain information or verify existing knowledge, do research and so on. Besides, reading also helps develops some skills in real life situations such as scanning the timetable when they fly by plane to go aboard or look for information on TV or magazines in English. In also supports to understand other cultures, the relationship between people or social communication. The more they read, the more knowledge they become. Therefore, they must read English effectively. However, English reading is often said to be difficult in spite of the students’ effort. The requirement for teachers is to teach their students how to overcome the difficulties, but this is not an easy task. At An Duong high school, English is a compulsory subject. Moreover, for the majors of English, after graduation, they will have to take a university entrance exam. However, through observing English reading classes, I have realized most of the students read texts at low speeds. They lack strategies to take advantage of their vocabulary, linguistic or prior knowledge to do tasks. Besides, the method of teaching is sometimes not suitable; for example, some teachers translate the texts into Vietnamese or explain too many new words, which is a waste of time without dealing with the tasks. For the aforementioned reasons, the author must investigate what strategies to bring effects and whether the teaching of strategies benefits students’ learning of reading or not. 1.2 Aims of the study 1 The main aim of this research is to investigate the reading comprehension level of 12th-grade students at ADHS, as well as explore the results of improved reading comprehension after students apply some strategies to the reading process. And, it will be able to help students improve their reading skills and prepare their luggage for the national high school graduation exam. 1.3 Scope of the study Due to the fixed curriculum and limited time, the study lasted for eight weeks and was conducted on two classes of 80 students at ADHS. Research has provided and analyzed the data collected from the experiment to find the appropriate strategy to help students improve their reading comprehension skills. 1.4 Method of the study The study was carried out based on quantitative research methods in which the questionnaire and tests were chosen as the tool. Questionnaires and tests were designed as a means to make the researcher's evaluation more objective. The questionnaires were given to the 45 students at ADHS with the hope to find out the causes of difficulties in reading skills experienced by them and some suggested solutions to their difficulties. Analyzing statistics from the survey questionnaire on reading activities were conducted with the cooperation of two classes of 12th grade students at ADHS. All comments, remarks recommendation assumptions, and conclusion provided in the study were based on the data analysis. 1.5 Design of the study This thesis consists of five chapters accompanied by a list of references and appendices. Chapter 1: Introduces the rationale for the study, the aims, the research questions, the scope, the significance and the design of the study. Chapter 2: Reviews some literature regarding to some general theories related to reading comprehension, difficulties in the reading comprehension process. Chapter 3: Provides a general description of the research method, the subjects chosen for the study, the data collection instruments and the procedures the research followed to conduct the study. Chapter 4: Presents the results of the 8-week experimental teaching, measured by the questionnaires and tests which were done in both the control class and the experimental class. 2 Chapter 5: Deals mainly with major findings and recommendations arising from the experiment, concerning teaching reading to the students at ADHS. The last section of this chapter is the conclusion to the whole study. 3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW The aims of this chapter is to review the literature relevant to the issues under research. The literature review focuses on the following aspects: (i) the nature of reading comprehension; (ii) reading strategy; (iii) reading comprehension techniques; (iv) reading comprehension challenges; (v) reading comprehension at senior high school. 2.1 The nature of reading comprehension 2.1.1: What is reading? Goodman (1971) defines reading as “a psycholinguistics process by which the reader, a language user, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display” (p.135). Goodman thought that this act of reconstruction is viewed as “a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing and confirming. William (1984) had the same view on reading, especially in the act of reconstruction as Goodman. He argues that “written texts, then, often contain more than we need to understand them. The efficient reader makes use of this to take what he needs, and no more, to obtain meaning” (p.3). His opinion is shared by Nuttall and Grellet. The former asserts that “reading is getting a message from the text.” Harmer (1989) considers reading as a mechanical process that” eyes receive the message and the brain then has to work out the significance of the message” (p.153). he not only focuses on two actions that dominated by the eyes and the brain but also the speed of the process” a reading text moves at a speed of the reader”, which means the reader who decides how fast he wants to read the text. In short, from these opinions above, it is clear that no one can give all the ideas and features of what reading is. Each definition reflects what reading means as seen from the scholar’s view. However, all definitions reveal their common feature, that is the nature of reading. Moreover, the definition “reading is understanding the author’s thought” seems to be preferable. We- the reader read the author’s mind not the author’s words. In this paper, reading is understood as a skill of reading what the writers imply from what they safe. 2.1.2: Type of reading 2.1.2.1: According to the ways of reading 2.1.2.1.1: Aloud reading 4 Aloud reading is an unnatural activity because most people do not read aloud in real life, and it is difficult for the speaker to pay attention to the meaning of the text when reading aloud. According to Doff (1988), “aloud reading involves looking at a text, understanding it and also saying it. Its purpose is not just to understand a text but to convey the implication to someone else” (p.67). This kind of activity seems to be more popular in the language classroom.it focuses on the pronunciation of words in the text rather than understanding. In reading a text, students come across many new words and phrases that they not know how to pronounce. The teacher, in this case may help his students pronounce words by reading the text orally and loudly. 2.1.2.1.2: Silent reading Silent reading is the nearest approach to the essence of reading. Because only by reading silently, can the readers best comprehend the written materials in the shortest possible time. According to Broughton, Brumfit and other linguistics (1980), (p.92), the nature of silent reading skills are to:  Survey material which is to be studies, to look through indexes, chapter heading and outlines.  Skim- particularly when one item of information is being sought in a mass of other printed information.  Gain superficial comprehension, as when reading for pleasure or preparing to read aloud.  Study the content of what is read in some detail.  Study the language in which the material is written. Through these ways of using reading, the reader depth and detail of understanding of comprehension will be improved effectively. 2.1.2.2: According to the purpose of reading a. Scanning Scanning means glancing rapidly through a text to search for a specific piece of information (Grellet, 1981). It means that scanning is the ability to read a text quickly in order to find specific information that is needed like a date, a figure, or a name and ignore over all unimportant information. For example, a student scanning the list of name in a telephone directory to find a phone number. 5 Scanning helps the reader find information quickly without reading the whole text. b. Skimming Skimming is a useful skill to be applied in reading. Grellet (1999) stated that skimming means glance rapidly over a text to get the gist of it. It means skimming is used to build students confidence and an understanding that it is possible to gain meaning without reading every word in a text. Skimming assists the readers to understand the main idea of the text before reading it carefully. Students can do skimming in several ways such as reading the title or the other heading and look a the picture, reading the first and the last paragraph of the text (Islam and Steenburgh, 2009). c. Intensive Reading Intensive reading is reading for detail. It usually has a shorter text. A reader usually wants to get some specific information. According to Macleod (2011), intensive reading exercises may include looking at main ideas versus details, understanding of what the text implies, making inferences, looking at the order of information and how it affects the message, identifying words that connect one idea to another and identifying words that indicate change from one section to another. d. Extensive Reading In extensive reading, the readers usually face a longer text. In reading, the readers need a total understanding of writing. According to Brown (2001), extensive reading is carried out to achieve a general understanding of a text. Long and Richards (1987) identify extensive reading as occurring when the students read large amounts of high interest material, concentrating of meaning, reading for gist and skips unknown the words. So, the aims of extensive reading are to build the readers’ confidence and enjoyment. 2.1.2: Definition of reading comprehension Reading is an activity to understand the content of the text that we read. By reading, the reader can get any message and information which can increase knowledge. According to Pang et al. (2003), reading is about understanding written texts and comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences and connected text. Reading comprehension involves both perception and thought. Readers will use the background of knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, and other strategies to help them to understand a 6 written text. It means reading is a process of communication between the writer and the reader. The writer has a message such as feelings, facts, ideas, and arguments they want to share. Then, the writer puts the message into the words. So, reading is a way in which something interpreted or understood. Reading does not only mean to understand words or grammar. It is not just translating but reading is thinking, to read well in English reading material text, and the reader must think what the text means. Reading comprehension is like having a conversation with someone. If you do not understand what the other person is saying, you will have no idea what they are talking about and have nothing to say in return. From the explanation above, the researcher concludes that reading comprehension is the process of getting the meaning of the content and all information about the topic in the text. Comprehending an English text is not easy to do for students because English is a foreign language. Many readers are not able to catch the author’s idea because of the limitation of thinking and analyzing the meaning of words and sentences. Therefore, the reader should have a good concentration in reading text to get the meaning of the author’s idea. 2.2: Reading strategies 2.2.1 General strategies for reading comprehension Students often do not automatically translate the strategies they use when learning to read and translate their native language into other languages. They will start reading each word and stop to search for something unknown. Everything happens slowly, boring and following a routine, an outdated way of reading. When they do this, the reading comprehension effect decreases and wastes time. To improve reading skills, students must practice reading a lot and use certain strategies. Students' ability to understand writing depends on their ability to use strategies to understand what the writer says. It means a strategy to help students understand the text they read. The following strategies can help students to read effectively and quickly: (1) Using Prior Knowledge/Previewing 7