VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN QUỲNH DƯƠNG USING SUPPLEMENTARY READING MATERIALS FOR IMPROVING STUDENTS' READING SKILL AT THAI NGUYEN COLLEGE OF MECHANICS AND METALLURGY Sử dụng tài liệu đọc bổ trợ để cải thiện kỹ năng đọc của sinh viên trường Cao đẳng Cơ khí - Luyện Kim, Thái Nguyên M. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10 HA NOI - 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN QUỲNH DƯƠNG USING SUPPLEMENTARY READING MATERIALS FOR IMPROVING STUDENTS' READING SKILL AT THAI NGUYEN COLLEGE OF MECHANICS AND METALLURGY Sử dụng tài liệu đọc bổ trợ để cải thiện kỹ năng đọc của sinh viên trường Cao đẳng Cơ khí - Luyện Kim, Thái Nguyên M. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10 SUPERVISOR: ĐINH HẢI YẾN, M. HA NOI - 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com -v- TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration p.
i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii List of abbreviations iv List of figures and tables iv Table of contents v PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1. Rationale of the thesis 1 2. Aims of the thesis 1 3. Significance of the thesis 2 4.
Scope of the thesis 2 5. Organization of the thesis 2 PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 3 Chapter 1: Literature Review 3 1. Definitions and roles of supplementary materials 3 1. Criteria for selecting supplementary materials 3 1.
Reading comprehension skill 4 1. Definitions of reading & reading comprehension 4 1. Purposes & roles of reading in language learning 6 1. Bottom-up approach 6 1.
Top-down approach 7 1. Types of reading 9 1. Summary 16 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com - vi - Chapter 2: Research Methodology 16 2. The context of the study 16 2.
Data collection procedures 20 2. Summary 21 Chapter 3: Data analysis and Discussion 22 3. Results of the questionnaires 24 3. Summary 35 PART 3: CONCLUSION 36 1.
Implications for teaching methodology 36 3. Limitations and recommendations for further research 38 References 39 Appendices Appendix 1: Pre-test I Appendix 2: Post-test IV Appendix 3: Weekly reading log VII Appendix 4: Book report VIII Appendix 5: Questionnaire (English version) XI Appendix 6: Questionnaire (Vietnamese version) XVI Appendix 7: Test result XXI TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com - iv - LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CMM: College of Mechanics and Metallurgy ER: Extensive Reading ERP: Extensive Reading Program ESP: English for Special Purposes BR: Bad Readers GR: Good Readers MR: Medium Readers SRM: Supplementary Reading Materials LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figures Figure 1. Efficient reading Figure 2 - Students’ attitudes towards importance of reading skill in English learning. Figure 3 - Students’ perception about reading section in their coursebook Figure 4 - Students’ perception about time allocation for reading in their coursebook.
Figure 5 - Students’ self-evaluation of their reading speed Figure 6 - Students’ extra reading before ERP Figure 7 - Students’ reading strategies in getting the main ideas of the texts Figure 8 - Students’ strategies in working with new vocabulary Figure 9 - Students’ preferred topics for reading Tables Table 1 - Tests results of the three groups BR, MR and GR Table 2 - Students’ tests results Table 3 - Students’ orientation before reading Table 4 - Students’ reading strategies when working with texts Table 5 - Students’ attitudes towards Extensive Reading Program Table 6 - Students’ suggestions for good supplementary reading materials TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com -1- PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the thesis Reading is an important mental process which belongs only to human beings. It helps to open the door into mankind's treasures of knowledge. Good reading skills can help readers make great progress in academic purposes.
It also brings people enjoyment and enriches our life. Undeniably, reading is an essential skill a person has to master. In English teaching and learning, reading is one of the four important major skills. However, the effectiveness of teaching and learning of this skill is still limited in many schools and colleges.
Methodologically, many teachers are influenced by the Grammar- translation method. According to them, teaching of reading means introducing vocabulary, grammatical structures and translating the text into their mother tongue. Furthermore, the reading materials are not sufficient, relevant and interesting enough to students which, accordingly, leads to students’ demotivation in learning reading. With regards to English teaching and learning methodology, there have been a lot of books and researches done on reading.
Some names to be considered are Nunan, D. (1991, 1999) in the series about language teaching and learning, Brown, H. (1984), to name but a few. The given authors share an opinion that once appropriate strategies are applied, intensive and extensive reading will help improve students' reading skill.
In order to explore the efficiency of using supplementary reading materials in improving students' reading skill, the author conducted an action research at Thai Nguyen College of Mechanics and Metallurgy (CMM). With this study, she wanted not only to enhance the teaching and learning efficiency of reading skill, but also to stimulate students' interest in language learning as well. Aims of the thesis The study is aimed at investigating whether the supplementary reading materials improve students' reading skill. Besides, it is hoped that the study will provide some suggestions for: - Selecting, adapting supplementary reading materials.
- Selecting appropriate methods for teachers to teach reading skill. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Significance of the thesis The study, hopefully, will be useful not only to the author and her colleagues in improving the teaching quality, but students will also benefit from it. Besides, the findings of the study will serve as a foundation for selecting and adapting supplementary reading materials and choosing the appropriate teaching methods.
Furthermore, it is hoped that the work will make some contribution to the field of teaching methodology. Scope of the thesis The study focuses on teaching and learning of the reading skill. The supplementary reading materials are selected and introduced to students by the teacher to make them read out of class (extensive reading), but under the teacher's monitoring. All the students/participants are of the second year of the Information technology Faculty at CMM.
Organization of the thesis The study has three main parts as follows: Part 1: Introduction. This part introduces the rationale, the aims, the significance, the scope and the organization of the study. Part 2: Development This part consists of three chapters: Chapter 1 provides literature review focusing on the issues related to supplementary reading materials and reading skill. Chapter 2 presents the methodology applied in this work.
It also includes an overview of the context of the study. Chapter 3 discusses the findings of the study based on the tests and questionnaires results Part 3: Conclusion This part summaries all the major issues in the previous parts with conclusions drawn from the findings. It also provides some implications for teaching methodology and suggestions for further research. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com -3- PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.
Definitions and roles of supplementary materials Supplementary materials may be defined differently. According to Tomlinson supplementary materials are …materials designed to be used in addition to the core materials of a course. They are usually related to the development of skills of reading, writing, listening or speaking rather than to the learning of language items.13) In other words, they are additional materials along with a course book to help develop learner's four major skills. Therefore, it is important for teachers to know how to choose the best supplementary materials for the class, and how to adapt materials appropriate for certain teaching purposes.
Supplementary materials have various types. As Ur (1996, pp.190-191)) states, they include computers, books, over head projectors, video equipment, audio equipment, posters, pictures, games etc. Each type has certain strong points and weak points in teaching and learning a language as well. Supplementary materials play a very important role in teaching and learning a language.
However, in this thesis, the author focuses only on reading skill. It is the reason why she discusses the roles of reading texts as supplementary reading materials. They are very helpful for the learners because "students have a readily available and sufficiently large supply of texts at their levels of language proficiency" (Aebersold & Field, 1997, p. As such, the role of supplementary reading materials in language teaching and learning is undeniably crucial.
Criteria for selecting supplementary materials When selecting supplementary materials "it is important to match the materials with the goals and objectives of the course,. with one's learners' attitudes, beliefs and preferences" (Nunan, 1991, p. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com -4- More specifically, Nuttall (1996, pp.170-179), takes into consideration six following criteria for selecting supplementary materials: - Suitability of content: The materials should be appropriate with students' tastes and interests. Enjoyable texts make reading more effective.
Suitability of the reading texts is also a motivation for students to read more. - Exploitability can be understood as facilitation of learning. It also means that teachers make use of the text to develop the students' competence as readers: integrating reading strategies (skimming, scanning, word attack skills, text attack skills…) - Readability refers to the combination of structural and lexical difficulty. The language of the text can be easy for one student, but difficult for another.
So, it is necessary to assess the students' language proficiency. - Variety makes the reading more interesting. Monotonousness brings boredom and demotivates students. - Authenticity: For reading to be effective, we need texts which exhibit the characteristics of true discourse: having something to say, being coherent and clearly organized and written by the foreign language community.
- Presentation: This criterion requires the materials to look attractive (illustrations, a large clear type, a spacious layout, etc.; texts accompanied by diagrams, photographs, etc). Clarke and Silberstain (1987, pp.236-237) in their article entitled "Toward a Realization of Psycholinguistic Principles in their ESL Reading Class", suggest two questions to be answered when discussing criteria for reading selections: - Is the reading selection appropriate to both the proficiency levels and students' interests? - Can the selection be made to provide practice in the skills we need to reinforce? From the points above, it can be seen that the scholars share the same ideas in that suitability of content (appropriate to the students' interests) and readability (appropriate to students' proficiency levels) are the two most important criteria in selecting reading materials. And the ideas about suitability of content and readability are also the guidelines for the researcher to select the supplementary reading materials for this study. Reading comprehension skill 1.
Definitions of reading and reading comprehension TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com -5- Different people define reading in different ways. One of the simplest definitions of reading suggested by Williams (1984, p.2) is that "it is a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been written". However, according to him, the reader is not passive, but active in that he "is able to arrive at understanding without looking at every letter and word, and generally reads in groups of words, not word by word, far less letter by letter". Actually, reading is a mental process which is not easily described.
In the most general term proposed by Rumehart (1977, cited in Aebersold & Field, 1997, p.5) "reading involves the reader, the text and the interaction between reader and text". In this perspective, the interaction between reader and text can be understood as a process in which the reader working with the printed words, uses his background knowledge and experiences to exploit the meaning of the text. Sharing this view, Anderson (1999, p.1) states: "reading is an active, fluent process which involves the reader and the reading material in building meaning". In brief, each person can have his own definition of reading.