THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES NGUYEN HONG NHUNG THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE FIRST LANGUAGE DISCUSSION ON ENGLISH READING COMPREHENSION FOR 12TH GRADE STUDENTS IN PHU LUONG HIGH SCHOOL (Hiệu quả của việc thảo luận bằng ngôn ngữ thứ nhất đối với việc đọc hiểu tiếng anh cho học sinh lớp 12 tại trường THPT Phú Lương) M. THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 THAI NGUYEN – 2019 Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn c THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES NGUYEN HONG NHUNG THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE FIRST LANGUAGE DISCUSSION ON ENGLISH READING COMPREHENSION FOR 12TH GRADE STUDENTS IN PHU LUONG HIGH SCHOOL (Hiệu quả của việc thảo luận bằng ngôn ngữ thứ nhất đối với việc đọc hiểu tiếng anh cho học sinh lớp 12 tại trường THPT Phú Lương) M. THESIS (APPLICATION ORIENTATION) Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor 1: Prof. Le Van Canh Supervisor 2: Dr.
Nguyen Thi Minh Loan THAI NGUYEN – 2019 Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn c DECLARATION I certify that the minor thesis entitled “The effectiveness of the first language discussion on English reading comprehension for 12th grade students in Phu Luong high school” is my own research in the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at Foreign Language Faculty, Thai Nguyen University. Signature: Nguyen Hong Nhung Thai Nguyen, 2019 Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn c ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to thank the thirty students who participated in my study. I would not be able to finish my study without their cooperation and help and I am grateful to those students for investing the time in the project. Le Van Canh and Dr.
Nguyen Thi Minh Loan my deepest gratitude for his and her enthusiastic guidance through the research. Particularly, I appreciate their useful promptness and feedback in response to all my questions on the drafts, their willingness to give advice in the very kind and supportive manner. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the Phu Luong High School for allowing me to undertake this study. Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn c ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the first language discussion on reading comprehension.
The study also aimed to explore the English learners’ personal opinions about the use of the first language in their own process of the reading comprehension. This study was carried out with 70 12th grade students at elementary English level (A1) at Phu Luong High School. This study adopted the quasi-experimental research design and the results were reflected through the pre-test and post-test. The results pointed out that the first language discussion had positive effectiveness on facilitating students’ English reading comprehension.
It was recommended that teachers and students should be encouraged to use the first language discussion strategy in the reading comprehension. Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn c TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study 1 1.2 Objectives of the study 3 1.3 Scope of the study 3 1.4 Significance of the study 3 1.5 Organization of the study 5 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 6 2.1 Views of the first language in the second language learning 6 2.1 The negative views of using the first language 6 2.2 The positive views of using the first language 8 2.3 The benefits of using the first language 8 2.2 The first language in the second language reading 9 2.1 Views of using the first language in the second language reading 9 2.2 Views of linguistic transfer 11 2.3 Collaborative group discussion 13 2.2 Views of using group discussion 13 2.3 The benefits of using group discussion 15 Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.4 Previous studies 17 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 21 3.4 Data collection instruments 22 3.1 Reading comprehension test 22 3.5 Data collection procedure 27 3.1 Test result analysis 33 3.2 Questionnaire analysis 33 CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 34 4.2 Research question 2 41 CHAPTER FIVE: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION 43 5.1 To English teachers 43 Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.2 To the students 43 5.2 Limitations of the study 43 5.3 Suggestions for the future study 44 5.4 Conclusion 44 REFERENCES 46 APPENDICES I APPENDIX A: Reading comprehension test I APPENDIX B: Questionnaire for students VII APPENDIX C: Lesson plan for the control group X APPENDIX D: Lesson plan for the experimental group XII Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn c CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION This chapter presented the rationale, objectives, scope, significance and organization of this study.1 Rationale for the study Reading is considered as an active, constant process in which the reader concurrently constructs and extracts meaning through involvement and interaction with a text (RAND Reading Study Group, 2002). Reading comprehension happens when the reader integrates and extracts diverse information from the text and connects it with what is already known (Koda, 2005, p. The reader combines the information taking from the text with their own background knowledge through assimilating what they read on memory (Graesser & Clark, 1985) as they look for constructing a dynamic and mental representation of text (Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Madden & Zwaan, 2004; Teng, 2009).
These mental representations are constantly updated during and after reading. Tey are also the foundation which the reader depends on their comprehend and interpretation the text. The reader bases on background and linguistic knowledge to construct preliminary expectation about a rejected, confirmed or refined text (Goodman, 1970, p. 260) through the process of reading as they aim to form a mental, coherent representation of comprehended information (Kintsch, 1974; Van Dijk & Kitsch, 1983; Garrod & Sansford, 1990; Gernsbacher, 1990; Mackay and Mountford, 1979).
Because the reader creates meaning by combining the incoming information of text with their existing knowledge (Kintsch, 1998), it is necessary that skilled readers interact efficiently between the incoming textual information and their background knowledge to form meaning. These researches have also recommended that the type of a text can play a role in the way that the reader interprets and comprehends a provided text including the types of prediction strategy that the reader selects at the beginning of the reading process to build initial inferences (Afflerbach, 1990). The reader comprehends and processes texts in different way according to their specific textual genres, knowledge and expectation (Einstein, McDaniel, Owen, Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn c & Coté, 1990; Geiger & Millis, 2004; Zwaan, 1994; Zwaan & Rapp, 2006). Collaboration through group discussion activity provides the readers with an optimal knowledge constructing environment (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2003) through encouraging the readers to be active in the learning process (Farzaneh & Nejadansari, 2014).
However, it is not much to know the extent of the first language use and the appropriate reasons for its use in reading discussion groups in the second reading classroom (Seng & Hashim, 2006, p. The need to facilitate English reading comprehension effectively has become necessary for 12th grade students in Phu Luong high school in the recent years. The students were interested in the higher education and percentage of being getting accepted at graduation and post-graduation courses has raised with the result of more understanding and awareness which is important to develop for each 12th grade student. Every year, Phu Luong high school usually promote and invest education which has supplied better chances for students to get higher results and this played an important role in developing progress of Phu Luong high school.
Nevertheless, it has been realized that after completing their pre-intermediate English level, students were unable to improve their English reading comprehension which prevented them from comprehending the reading materials successfully. The students became attractive towards memorization and they cared about keeping the knowledge in memory for the benefit of passing in exams without understanding its meaning and application. English textbooks which were used in educational system are written in English. Additionally, the book was impossible to satisfy the demand of the students and concepts of reading materials made it even more difficult for students to understand.
The teachers who teach in Phu Luong high school expressed their concerns about the students’ ability in reading comprehension. It is required that the students are able to read and can improve better understanding with the teacher’s guidance. The shortage of the ability to facilitate the reading comprehension was very difficult for both the students and the teachers to complete the programme as schedule. Also, inability in comprehension resulted in a fear in the minds of the students.
There was a necessary requirement to discover which strategy should be Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn c used by the teachers while teaching at 12th grade students level, and this strategy would also help the students to put their interest in English reading comprehension, thus they could study effectively. For all reasons above, the writer would like to conduct a study on using the first language discussion strategy to improve students’ reading comprehension. The study was expected to contribute to teaching and learning the reading comprehension for 12th grade students at Phu Luong high school.2 Objectives of the study The purpose of study was to investigate the effectiveness of the first language discussion on the learners’ English reading comprehension. The study also aimed to explore the learners’ personal opinions about the use of the first language discussion in their own process of reading comprehension.3 Scope of the study This thesis only focused on the effectiveness of the first language discussion on English reading comprehension and was carried out for 70 12th grade students on the first semester of school year 2018 – 2019 at Phu Luong high school.4 Significance of the study The practical consideration was the significance of this research.
Therefore, the result of the research was expected to be effective and useful to the teachers, the students and the researcher in using the first language discussion in teaching and learning the reading comprehension. The research was expected to discover and demonstrate the effectiveness of applying the first language discussion in teaching and learning English reading comprehension. Therefore, teachers and students at Phu Luong high school would implement the teaching and learning more effectively. English teachers at Phu Luong high school were looked forward to intensifying this strategy in teaching reading comprehension and the writer hoped that this study would give a contribution in the educational development of language teaching and learning about reading comprehension by applying the first language discussion strategy.
Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn c This research was expected to overcome the students’ difficulties at Phu Luong high school in facilitating their reading comprehension and it could make the students be interested in learning reading comprehension. For the researchers, it was believed that this study would be one of the references for other researchers to find out information about reading comprehension through the first language discussion.5 Organization of the study This research was divided into five chapters: Chapter I: “Introduction” – provided an overview of this research, including rationale for the study, purposes of the study, scope of the study, significance of the study and organization of the study.