VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES VŨ THỊ KIM THANH A STUDENT- BASED EVALUATION OF THE READING COMPREHENSION TASKS IN “TIENG ANH 12 NANG CAO” ĐÁNH GIÁ CỦA HỌC SINH VỀ CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG ĐäC HIỂU TRONG SÁCH “TIẾNG ANH 12 NÂNG CAO” MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD: METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 HANOI - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES VŨ THỊ KIM THANH A STUDENT- BASED EVALUATION OF THE READING COMPREHENSION TASKS IN “TIENG ANH 12 NANG CAO” ĐÁNH GIÁ CỦA HỌC SINH VỀ CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG ĐäC HIỂU TRONG SÁCH “TIẾNG ANH 12 NÂNG CAO” MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD: METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 SUPERVISOR: LÊ VĂN CANH (MA) HANOI - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.Thesis Table of contents STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. III LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. IV LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES. Statements of the Problems and Rationale for the Study.
Aims of the Study. Significance of the Study. Scope of the Study. Methods and Procedures.
The Structure of the Thesis. Review of Literature .1 Definition of Reading and Reading Comprehension .2 The Importance of Reading Comprehension in Foreign Language Learning .3 Reading Sub-Skills .2 Reading comprehension Tasks .3 Types of Reading Tasks .1 Definition of Textbook Evaluation.2 The purpose of Textbook Evaluation .3 Types of Textbook Evaluation .4 Models of Micro-Evaluation of Tasks .5 Student- Based Textbook Evaluation.6 The Need to Have Students’ Evaluation of the Reading Tasks .7 Criteria for Evaluation. 12 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.4 Previous Studies on the New Set of English Textbooks. OVERVIEW OF THE READING TASK IN TIENG ANH 12 NANG CAO .1 Overview of the National Curriculum and Syllabus for ELT .2 Overview of the Textbook .3 Overview of the Reading Section .1 Reading Text Types .2 Reading Task Types .3 Data collection methods .4 Data Collection Procedures.
23 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS .1 Usefulness of the Reading Tasks .2 Usefulness of the information .3 Genres of reading texts.4 Helping to develop and consolidate vocabulary and grammar competence .5 Relevance to students’ level of English.6 Preparing students for exams .7 Developing sub- reading skills.8 The need to modify and supply more reading comprehension tasks.9 Matching personal reading strategies .1 Usefulness to students’ English language learning .2 Relevance to the students’ needs. 34 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.Thesis CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS .1 Summary of the study.2 Providing Supplementary Reading Texts .4 Limitations of the study. 42 APPENDIX 1: PHIÕU §IÒU TRA HỌC SINH. CÂU HỎI PHỎNG VẤN CHO HỌC SINH.
V APPENDIX 3 OVERALL EVALUATION OF THE READING SECTION. THE SUGGESTED ADDITION OF THE READING TASKS. SUPPLEMENTARY READING TEXTS. IX LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.Thesis LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Table 1: Types of reading tasks developed within Davies‟ and Green‟s model .1 Reading Text Types .2 Quantity of Reading Tasks .3 Types of Reading Tasks .1 Students‟ general opinions on the usefulness of the reading tasks .2 Students‟ opinion on the usefulness of the information.3 Students‟ opinion on genres of reading texts .1 Students‟ opinions towards how much vocabulary and grammar is consolidated and developed .2 Students‟ assessment of the relevance of the reading tasks to their level of English .3 Relevance to the requirement of the exams .4 The sub-skills of reading tasks students gained .4 Student‟s opinions on the needs of modification .5 Relevance to students‟ personal learning method in general and method to learn reading comprehension in particular.
31 Table 5 : Added tasks suggested in the three reading stages in each unit. 39 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Statements of the Problems and Rationale for the Study In the age of globalization the status of English has been enhanced. As Richard (1985:1) reminds us the current state of English has turned a significant percentage of the world population into part time users or learners of English.
This is also true for Vietnam in the new social context with the recent economic renovation, the participation in WTO as well as regionalization and globalization. There has been increasing demand for mastering English. The teaching and learning English in high secondary school is most prioritized by the MOET. The old set of textbooks which was used for a long time has been replaced by the new one in 2002 which is claimed to incorporate the latest methodology in second language teaching.
The introduction of the new textbooks is considered the first step towards the achievement of better quality of education. The objectives of the books have been adjusted for a better use of English “as a tool of communication at basic level in terms of listening, speaking, reading and writing” (Hoang et al. Being an effective and fluent reader in another language is very important as reading helps students consolidate what they have learned and support their further study. According to Carrel (1981:1), “for many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills, particularly in English as a second or a foreign language”.
Unfortunately, teaching and learning readings skills is still far from satisfactory for various reasons. The new textbooks for upper secondary school level comprised two sets: the basic book and advanced books. Hoang Van Thu specializing secondary school chooses the basic books for non English specializing classes and the advanced for English specializing ones. English 10 and English 11 were approved and officially introduced into schools by MOET in the academic years 2006-2007 and 2007-2008, respectively.
English 12 has been implemented in the nationwide scale since the academic year 2008-2009. Up to now it has been used for English specialized classes of grade 12 in Hoang Van Thu school for two years. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.Thesis As a teacher of English in a specializing high school, I have worked quite closely with the new textbooks. I have noticed that although the books have shown a great deal of improvement as compared with the old series of grammar-based textbooks, they also bear several limitations as it can not be of great help to improve students‟ language knowledge and more importantly it hardly caters for all the needs of students.
In a specializing school the students‟ level of language proficiency is rather high. Tieng Anh 12 Nang Cao does not come to students‟ expectations in term of language, grammar, the length and the quality of the tasks. Students have to use supplementary reading material to improve their reading skill which is compulsory part in all exams. So how would the teachers solve this problem? The methodology course in postgraduate program has changed our mind and provided us with the new perspective about our English language teaching career.
It helps us shape our critical thinking towards using the textbooks. The research therefore is conducted to evaluate the reading comprehension task in Tieng Anh 12 Nang Cao using student - based evaluation. Since the 1970‟s there has been a movement to make learners the center of language instruction and it is probably best to view textbooks as resources in achieving aims and objectives that have already been set in terms of learner needs. “The learner is focused” is one of the issues mentioned by Canagarajah (2006) in which the role of learner has been highlighted.
As English has become an international language, learners with their diverse learning contexts and needs are focused in more specific ways. Research on the limitations of the new textbooks has been a core part of my study. Based on the findings, recommendations are made which are expected to help improve students‟ reading skill to enable them firstly to successfully fulfill the reading section in the university entrance examination paper, and secondly to further their study. Aims of the Study The study aims to understand students‟ evaluative comments on the usefulness and relevance of the reading tasks in terms of preparing better for the high school graduation and university entrance exams, further study and future jobs.
Particularly, the study tries to answer the following two research questions: LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. To what extent do students find the reading comprehension tasks useful to their English language learning? 2. To what extent do students find the reading comprehension tasks relevant to their learning needs? 3. Significance of the Study The study helps the audience to be aware of the strong and week points of the text book.
This would also enable the teachers to effectively exploit the strength and revise, modify or supplement the materials if necessary. Moreover, it is useful for the teachers to listen to their students about their interests, needs, and expectations. Only by doing that, can we respond to their needs at the utmost and maximize the learning/teaching objectives by revising the textbook. The study has been also a benefit for the evaluator herself.
As Richards, (1990) believes that a successful teacher is the one who can evaluate teaching materials and to teach students successfully, therefore it is a good chance to review major theoretical basis relating to material evaluation. Being equipped with the knowledge, teachers have a critical thinking towards the material they are using, namely, they can evaluate it systematically and methodologically. This work is also of great use for the writer to gain good and useful insights into the nature of the reading comprehension tasks in the textbook. This micro- evaluation will serve as basis for evaluating other tasks such as listening, speaking, and writing tasks.
Scope of the Study First, the study can not be generalized to other 12 specializing classes in HVT specializing school as their English textbook is the basic set and it can not also be applied in other high schools even though they teach the same textbook because of different population. Second, the study was concerned with evaluating only the Reading Comprehension Tasks in Tieng Anh 12 Nang Cao. The limitation of time and the scope of a minor thesis do not allow the researcher of this project to cover many aspects as expected. However, the subject is hopefully deeply analyzed.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Methods and Procedures In order to find the answer for the above research questions, the writer reviewed different textbook evaluation methods of many researchers in this field and finally found that the method proposed by Ellis (1997) is the most suitable as this study aims to evaluate one task in a textbook. To collect the data, the methods used in the thesis are questionnaires and interview. Survey questionnaires here play a vital role in getting feedback from students about the reading tasks in Tieng Anh 12 Nang Cao.
Interview is served to probe more about students‟ concrete opinions. The Structure of the Thesis This thesis is divided as follows: The Introduction presents the background to the study, states the aims, significance, discusses the scope of the study, method and procedure and outlines the thesis. Chapter One, Literature Review, discusses issues relating to reading, reading evaluation, task evaluation and reading comprehension tasks, which serves as the scientific base for the thesis. Chapter Two presents the overview of the reading task in Tieng Anh 12 Nang Cao.
Chapter Three, Methodology, presents the deep analysis of the setting including the students‟ profile and institution. It also describes data collection instrument, data collection procedure and data analysis. Chapter Four, Data Analysis and Discussion, presents the results from the questionnaire, and interview. The chapter ends with a discussion of the findings.
Chapter Five, Recommendations and Conclusion, presents the recommendations drawn from the findings of the study and concludes the thesis. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Review of Literature 1.1 Definition of Reading and Reading Comprehension What is Reading?