VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES HOÀNG ĐỨC HẠNH AN INVESTIGATION INTO READING STRATEGIES FOR DOING READING COMPREHENSION TESTS EMPLOYED BY GRADE 10 ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN CITY HIGH SCHOOL NGHI N Ứ HI N Đ Đ P NG HI À ÀI HI Đ HI H INH H I 10 CHUYÊN ANH NG NG H PH H NG HÀNH PH H NG Y N M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 60140111 HANOI – 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES HOÀNG ĐỨC HẠNH AN INVESTIGATION INTO READING STRATEGIES FOR DOING READING COMPREHENSION TESTS EMPLOYED BY GRADE 10 ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN CITY HIGH SCHOOL NGHI N Ứ HI N Đ Đ P NG HI À ÀI HI Đ HI H INH H I 10 CHUYÊN ANH NG NG H PH H NG HÀNH PH H NG Y N M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 60140111 SUPERVISOR: Assoc. NGUYỄN VĂN ĐỘ HANOI – 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com N I E’ E EN I hereby certify that the minor thesis, “An investigation into reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests employed by Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School”, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, is my own work.
This thesis has not been submitted for any degree to any other universities or institutes. Candidate‟s signature: Dated: October 13th, 2016 HOÀNG ĐỨC HẠNH i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Nguyễn Văn Độ, who helped, supported me when I conducted this study. Without his helpful comments, valuable advice and significant assistance, this study could not have been completed.
I would like to thank all lecturers in the Department of Post-Graduate, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University for their meaningful and interesting lectures. I am grateful to Ms. Bui Nhu Hoa and her students in class 10D2 who were always willing to join this study and provide it with valuable data. I am indebted to Mr.
Le Hai Doan, Mr. Nguyen Duc Ta, Ms. Tran Minh Chi, Ms. Doan Mai Hoai Anh, as well as a lot of friends, relatives who constantly encouraged and tried their best to make conditions for me to complete this thesis.
Last but not least, my special thanks must go to my Mum, my Family and my Love for their kindest care for me and my thesis. They are my strengths to overcome all difficulties and complete this thesis. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This study reports on an evaluation of the strategies which are used in reading comprehension tests by some English major students. Both quantitative and qualitative data analyses are employed in the study.
Forty-eight students in Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School took a three-text reading comprehension test, followed by a 30-item questionnaire of metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies taken in a test; then, two high-proficiency, and two low- proficiency students were invited for an interview for further information of their actual thoughts on the reading comprehension skill and their present status of strategies use as reading test-takers. The results suggest that (1) metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies were used with medium frequency by the students; (2) the high-proficiency students reported a higher use of both strategies than the low-proficiency students. Then, the discussion and recommendation of strategies for better performance are also presented. The researcher believes that this study can be considered as a useful source of reference for not only students but also teachers who share the same concern.
iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABREVIATIONS ESL : English as a second language EFL : English as a foreign language L2 : Second language iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES TABLES Table 1. Reading strategies: definition and classification (O‟Malley & Chamot, 1990) Table 2. Background information of the participants Table 3. The detailed categories of strategies in Part 2 of the questionnaire Table 4.
Two major classes of reading strategies Table 5. Descriptive statistic of eighteen sub-strategies of reading strategies Table 6. Frequency distribution of metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies Table 7. Difference between two groups of students in metacognitive strategies use Table 8.
Differences between two groups of students in cognitive strategies use Table 9. List of strategies need to be improved by the high-proficiency group Table 10. List of strategies need to be improved by the low-proficiency group Table 11. List of strategies should be paid attention by the low-proficiency group FIGURES Figure 1.
The definition of reading by Anderson (2008) Figure 2. The importance of reading comprehension compared to Ss‟ purpose Figure 3. The students‟ evaluation of difficult levels Figure 4. The evaluation of some factors influencing reading comprehension performance Figure 5.
CALLA instructional framework v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS CANDIDATE‟S STATEMENT. III LIST OF ABREVIATIONS. IV LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES. Rationale of the study.
Aims of the study. Scope of the study. Significance of the research. Methods of the study.
Design of the study. 3 PART II – DEVELOPMENT. 5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW.1 Reading and Reading comprehension .1 What is reading.2 What is reading comprehension .2 Strategies, reading strategies and classifications of reading strategies .1 What are strategies .2 What are reading strategies .3 Classifications of reading strategies .3 Previous studies on strategies for reading comprehension tests in Vietnam and in other countries.1 Previous studies on strategies for reading comprehension tests in Vietnam ………………………………………………………………………….12 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 Previous studies on reading strategies for reading comprehension tests for reading comprehension tests in other countries.2 Participants and settings of the study .2 Settings of the study .1 A three-text reading comprehension test .4 Data collection procedure. 21 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .2 The interview with the students .2 Discussion about the research questions .1 To what extent are reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests used by Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School? ……………………………………………………………….2 To what extent do the high-proficiency students and low-proficiency students differ in terms of employing reading strategies in reading comprehension tests?.
34 PART III – CONCLUSION .1 Strategies that each group of students need to improve .2 Reading strategies training. 38 vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Limitations and suggestions for further research .2 Suggestions for further research. 43 APPENDIX 1: Reading comprehension tests……………………………………….VII APPENDI 3: Interview……………………………………………………….XVII APPENDIX 4: Transcription of the interviewer‟s response……….………… XVIII viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART I – INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale of the study Thanks to its worldwide popularity and importance, English has been at the top among the most popular foreign languages taught in schools of numerous countries all over the world. The Vietnamese education system is not an exception where English has been a compulsory subject from primary schools, secondary schools, high schools, to universities, and even higher education in most sixty three provinces nationwide. In Vietnam‟s context, English is taught and learned in a non-native environment; therefore reading skill has been considered as the most vital one to be mastered, as a key of getting knowledge as well as a means of further study. Reading comprehension tests in English are familiar with students during their school life, especially those at high schools because most national standardized tests still keep the grammar- and reading-based format, and reading comprehension accounts for a large part in important national examinations including graduation and university entrance ones.
High school students whose major subject is English in general long for having good results in English tests, therefore they always desire to pass reading comprehension tests with flying colors. It is also true for Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School. However, their results of the reading comprehension tests, or their performance in these tests still do not meet the expectation of both students and teachers. In search of a remedy for the situation, strategies used by students in the reading comprehension tests have been taken into great consideration by the researcher.
According to Zhang (2011), “the strategies used during tests should be looked at when researchers are attempting to explain variation in a specific language test performance because they (the strategies) are directly related to test score variation.136) 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com In contrast to numerous research conducted on investigating reading and the strategies applied for reading comprehension with the works of Cohen (1991), Hosenfeld (1984), Carrell (1999), the investigations into what students are actually doing during the reading comprehension tests, that is, the strategies used under test- taking environment, are not so popular, especially in Vietnam context. In other words, strategies in reading comprehension tests are still open for Vietnamese educators and/or researchers. In addition, the researcher has taught high school students for several years, and been aware of difficulties of students while doing reading comprehension tests. Especially for students whose major is English, it is by far important for them to fully master the strategies for passing reading comprehension tests with the highest scores.
Therefore, the researcher intends to explore the current strategies use of Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School employing for doing English reading comprehension tests, as well as finds out the differences among the strategies used by students of higher reading ability and those of lower reading ability, namely, high and low proficiency students. Based on the findings and searching, the researcher will make some recommendations to improve the students‟ reading comprehension results. For all reasons mentioned above, the researcher decides to work on a study in the name of “An investigation into reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests employed by Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School” 2. Aims of the study The present study attempts to study the current status of reading strategies use for doing reading comprehension tests among Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School.
To be more specific, this study is expected to achieve the two primary aims: 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com (i) To investigate the reading strategies employed by the students of Grade 10 English major at Hung Yen City High School for doing reading comprehension tests; and (ii) To investigate the difference in terms of strategies use between the two groups of the high- and low- proficiency students; 3. Scope of the study Strategies employed by the reading test-takers are such a broad topic that the researcher cannot discuss all the related aspects. Therefore, within the framework of a minor thesis, this study focuses on the metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies employed for doing reading comprehension tests by Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School. Significance of the research The research was carried out with the hope that the results of the study will provide deeper insights into the nature of what the students are actually doing while taking their English reading comprehension tests.
This may lead to suggestions for improving their results of reading comprehension tests as well as making it less difficult for the students when taking this kind of tests in their ongoing study. Methods of the study This study was conducted as a descriptive study that utilized both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The quantitative analysis was employed through the process of data collected from a written questionnaire.