BANKING ACADEMY OF VIETNAM FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES GRADUATION THESIS CHALLENGES ENCOUNTERED BY ATC STUDENTS IN READING SKILL II AT BAKING ACADEMY Supervisor : M.A Tran Thi Thu Thuy Student name : Nguyen Thanh Ha Class : K20 ATCC Faculty : Foreign Languages Student code : 20A7510051 Hanoi 2021 17014125809171000000 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINITY I declare that this dissertation entitled “CHALLENGES ENCOUNTERED BY ATC STUDENTS IN READING SKILL II AT BAKING ACADEMY” is the result of my original research work. The research is based on my reading and understanding of original texts, and it had not been published anywhere. The other books, articles, websites, which I have made use of are stated in the reference of this paper. For the present thesis, which I’m submitting to Banking Academy of Vietnam, has not been submitted to any other universities.
Author Nguyen Thanh Ha i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Throughout the writing of this dissertation I have received a great deal of support and assistance. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude towards the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Banking Academy for giving me the opportunity to do research. I also would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude my supervisor, Professor Tran Thi Thu Thuy, whose expertise was invaluable in for not only in formulating the whole research but also in formulating my writing foundation. Your insightful feedback pushed me to sharpen my thinking and brought my works to be better.
Words cannot describe enough my gratitude for your teaching, guidance, encouragement throughout my college years. In addition, I would like to thank to my parents and my younger brother for giving me motivation and strength. Finally, I may not have completed this study without the support from my friend, Hung, who provided helpful discussions and happy distractions to rest my mind outside of my research. Author Nguyen Thanh Ha ii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
Background of the study. Objectives of the study. Significance of the study. Scope and limitation of the study.
Structure of the study. 4 CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE. Definition of Reading Skill. Types of reading.
Factors relating to difficulties in learning Reading Skill II. 20 CHAPTER 3 – RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Locale of the study. Data gathering procedure.
Population and Sample description. Validity and Reliability. 26 CHAPTER 4 - DATA ANALYSIS .1 ATC students’ difficulties in working with reading types .2 ATC students’ difficulties in applying reading techniques .3 ATC students’ difficulties in practicing reading tasks .4 ATC students' difficulties with vocabulary .5 ATC students’ difficulties with reading materials.6 Other factors contributing to ATC students’ reading difficulties. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS .1 ATC students’ difficulties with types of reading .2 ATC students’ difficulties with reading techniques .3 ATC students’ difficulties with doing reading tasks .4 ATC students’ difficulties with types of reading .5 Other factors contributing to ATC students’ reading difficulties .1 Top three major and least difficulties of ATC students in Reading Skill II 38 CHAPTER 6: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS .1 Summary of findings.
50 iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ACRONYMS WORD’S MEANING English-majored students at the Faculty ATC of Foreign Languages at Banking Academy of Vietnam v LIST OF FIGURES Chart 4. ATC students’ difficulties in working with reading types Chart 4. ATC students’ difficulties in applying reading techniques Chart 4. ATC students’ difficulties in practicing reading tasks Chart 4.
ATC students' difficulties with vocabulary Chart 4. ATC students’ difficulties with reading materials Chart 4. Other factors contributing to ATC students’ reading difficulties vi ABSTRACT Title: CHALLENGES ENCOUNTERED BY ATC STUDENTS IN READING II AT BAKING ACADEMY Author: Nguyen Thanh Ha, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Banking Academy of Vietnam Advisor: MA Tran Thi Thu Thuy, Deputy of Division of General English Key words: reading, reading difficulties, EFL, English-majored, ATC, reading skill, vocabulary Abstract: English plays a crucial role in modern world nowadays. Being proficient in English may help individuals to stand out from others in the labor force.
Reading is one of the four skills that students need to be proficient in order to achieve that goal. However, during Reading Skill II course, some students reveals reading difficulties and poor performance. Hence, the purpose of this study is to figure out those difficulties and offer some suggestions to lessen the problems. A questionnaire survey was conducted among eighty English-majored students in order to collect data serving for the purpose of this study.
The findings showed that the major difficulties among English-majored students were vocabulary and pressure of time when doing reading tasks. Background of the study Among different languages are being taught in Vietnam, English is considered to be more popular than the others and thus, it has a prominent status. English language can be seen in every corner of Vietnam. There are Vietnamese newspaper in English, even documents, television programs and so on.
Hence, English proficiency is considered as an important tool to help individual to gain competitiveness in life, job, work (Hoang, 2019). Since there is a growing demand for learning English among EFL learners in order to meet the working requirements, English has been taught in many schools and universities. It went from being as subject, to non-major, then major. At Banking Academy, realizing the importance of English in Banking and Finance sector, the students at the Faculty of Foreign Languages (ATC students) are required to be proficient for four language skills including: reading, writing, speaking, listening.
Being proficient of four English skills are of importance for the students to become compete in the labor market. What students can absorb from reading can also be used in writing, speaking and listening practice as well. Therefore, it is really important for the students to be equipped with Reading Skill in order to comprehend the documents more efficiently. As a result, reading skill courses are compulsory for all ATC students.
Despite the fact that all of the ATC students have experienced the clear instructions in reading skill II class, their performance in class and in tests are still under expectation. In order to have a broad overview and deep understandings on the difficulties that ATC students have encountered, the study “Challenges that ATC students encountered while studying Reading Skill II’ would be conducted to figure out common difficulties and from the findings, some suggestions could be proposed to lessen those difficulties. Objectives of the study The aim of the research is to identify the major problems that ATC students have faced when studying Reading Skill II. Therefore, some recommendations should be proposed to reduce these difficulties.
The findings of the research hopefully would be useful for teachers, and students at the Faculty of the Foreign Languages to identify the problems and figure out the suitable methods to avoid those difficulties. Research questions This study aims at finding out the difficulties that ATC students have encountered when studying Reading Skill II. The research question is addressed in this study as follows: What are the ATC students’ difficulties when studying Reading Skill II? 1. Significance of the study From the findings of the study, ATC students and teachers could have better awareness about the reading problems.
They would also consider the method suggested to reduce their difficulties. Hopefully, this research shall be useful for policy makers, teachers, professors when designing the teaching curriculum for the students. The study would show some problems of the ATC students in English, specifically in Reading Skill II with hope to raise their awareness and effort to overcome these difficulties. Also, from realizing the problems that they have in Reading Skill II course, the students can take up effective methods for better performance.
Another significance of the study is the findings which may be useful for ATC teachers to understand the student’s difficulties in Reading Skill II. As a result, they would be inspired to design and give lessons to deal with the problems among the students based on the findings of the study. Scope and limitation of the study The study was conducted among ATC students who had completed Reading Skill II course to figure out the difficulties that they have faced when studying. Therefore, the focus was placed on clarifying their problems.
A survey was carried out to 3 collect data on different categories in reading difficulties that they faced. The data from the research would be analyzed to get the target of this study. This study, however, has potential limitations. This study was involved by eighty students, equivalent to a size of a class at the Faculty of Foreign Languages.
Further study should be conducted on larger scale, on all the students who have completed Reading II, so that the results would ensure the better generalization. Moreover, the results of this study may only be valid for the moment because in the future, the level of the proficiency in English of the participants may not be the same at the moment. Furthermore, Reading Skill II course is usually taken place on the first and second year of college. Then, those senior students who took part in this study may not have a clear memory about the difficulties that they experienced in Reading Skill II.
Structure of the study The study is divided in to five chapters as follows: Chapter 1 describes the study’s background, objectives, significance, scope and limitation of the study Chapter 2 analyzes scholarly sources on previous studies Chapter 3 explains the design of the research along with techniques used to gather data Chapter 4 presents the collected data and review the information Chapter 5 suggests some methods, recommendations for students and teachers and comes up with the conclusion of the whole study. 4 CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 2. Definition of Reading Skill Reading is considered to be the most important of the four skills, particularly for English learners (Anderson, 2003), and it is the most essential skill and has a great impact on the EFL students’ language development, especially for the young learners among four language skills (Al-Issa, 2006). Additionally, reading is the most important skill to master in order to ensure success in learning, and it has been considered as an interactive process with many different levels that readers can build a meaningful representation of text by using their background knowledge (Mart, 2012; Tran & Duong, 2018).
At school, students have to cope with academic reading, which is defined as a purposeful and critical reading of a range of lengthy academic reading texts for completing the study of specific subject areas (Sengupta, 2002). It is also different from other forms of reading, because academic reading is complex and discipline- specific, carefully synthesizing material from a number of sources. If students want to get the most out of the materials they are assigned, they have to learn to read critically or analytically (Hulya, 2013). The definition of ‘reading skill’ has been investigated in many studies, however, each definition can only be reflected its author’s objective view.
Reading skill is regarded as a decoding ability of “reconstructing the author’s intended meaning via recognizing printed letters and words, and building up a meaning for a text” (Zhang, 2008) In another aspect, a good reader is the one who possess reading skills, including phonics, word recognition, vocabulary, decoding and fluency. Types of reading 2. Extensive Reading There have been conflicting definitions of the term ‘extensive reading’. Some people use it to refer to describe “skimming and scanning activities,” others refer it to the number of reading materials.
After a pilot study in India, extensive reading 5 was introduced as an approach to language learning process, in which the students read a large amount of materials for general understanding (Loh, 2009). Extensive reading is defined as reading large quantities of easy language materials for comprehension without performing any tasks after reading.