THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DO THI THUY DEVELOPING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ INFERENTIAL READING SKILLS (Phát triển kỹ năng đọc suy luận cho học sinh bậc THPT) M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 THAI NGUYEN – 2019 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DO THI THUY DEVELOPING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ INFERENTIAL READING SKILLS (Phát triển kỹ năng đọc suy luận cho học sinh bậc THPT) M.A THESIS (APPLICATION ORIENTATION) Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Ph. Nguyen Thanh Long THAI NGUYEN – 2019 ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby acknowledge that this study is mine. The data and findings discussed in the thesis are true, used with permission from associates and have not been published elsewhere. Name: Do Thi Thuy Date:.
This study was approved by Dr. Nguyen Thanh Long iii i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the encouragement and whole-hearted assistance of many people. Firstly, I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Thanh Long Nguyen, whose encouragement, guidance and support from initial to the final level has enabled me to overcome many difficulties and develop my research skills.
I would like to extend my special thanks to all the staff, especially the teaching staff at Thai Nguyen University where I have studied for providing me with knowledge, research skills and facilities. My special thanks also go to the students who have participated in this project. Without their assistance, I would not have been able to collect valuable data for the project. Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my family, whose continuous encouragement, support, and love helped me pass through insurmountable difficulties during my research.
ii iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This study aimed to examine how cognitive strategies are beneficial to 12th grade students in performing their reading tasks related to inference. To focus on the overall objective above, the study concerned about what high school students’ attitudes toward inferential reading tasks were, how the motivation factor affected high school students’ inferential reading result, and how the cognitive reading strategies applied in inferential reading affected students’ results in terms of scores. Participating in this study were 80 students of grade 12 from Van Lang School. In collecting the research data, I used inferential pre-test and post-test reading instrument, questionnaire, interviews and diary notes.
The tests were used to measure the students’ ability to understand the texts, the improvement of students after 8-weeks introducing cognitive strategies and having students practice cognitive strategies in inferential tasks while the questionnaire was used to obtain information about some necessary personal participants and find out cognitive strategies used by students. Research data were collected both quantitatively and qualitatively. The research findings show that students used strategies of cognitive dimensions in inference effectively and moderately, and prove that students’ attitudes and motivation affected positively in inferential task performance. iii v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF TABLES v LIST OF FIGURES v PART A.
Background of the study 1 2. Statement of the problem 2 3. Aims of the study 4 5. Significance of the study 5 6.
Scope of the study 5 7. Organization of the thesis 5 PART B: DEVELOPMENT 7 CHAPTER 1. Attitudes and Motivation towards reading 16 CHAPTER 2. Research questions and objectives 21 2.
Data collection instruments 22 2. Data collection procedure 24 2. Data analysis 26 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 29 3. Discussion 40 PART C: CONCLUSION 44 1.
Limitations of the study and recommendations for further studies 45 REFERENCES 47 APPENDICES I iv vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 2. Students’ attitude towards inferential reading 30 Table 3. Reasons students to learn English 31 Table 3. Students’ self- assessed English inferential reading proficiency 34 Table 3.
Statistics from pre-test 34 Table 3. The marks students gained in pre-test 35 Table 3.6: Pre- test and post- test performance 35 Table 3. Paired Samples t-Test 36 Table 3.8: Individual cognitive strategies used by respondents 36 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Types of inferences 10 Figure 1.2: A tetrahedral model of studies on inference generation in reading 11 Figure 1.3: Types of strategies 13 Figure 3. Students’ attitude towards becoming proficient in inferential reading 29 v vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
INTRODUCTION This initial part states the background of the present study, the statement of the problem and rationale for the study, the aims, objectives and the scope of the whole paper. Above all, it is in this part that the research questions are identified to work as clear guidelines for the whole research. Background of the study Reading comprehension, which is language comprehension and general comprehension, is a complex psychological process. Skehan (1998) state reading comprehension is an interaction between the reader’s background knowledge and the text, between writing symbols and abstract information.
That is, reading consists of a number of interactive processes between the reader and the text, in which readers use their knowledge to build, to create and to construct meaning. Besides, reading is a vital means of gaining new knowledge, and thus students need to acquire effective strategies to cope with reading demands (Hellekjaer, 2009). In reality, we can see that people who read more are able to solve problems more easily than those who do not. The differences are seen more clearly in the learning activities, namely, those students who read more have different academic behaviors than those of students who rarely read.
Thus, it can be said that interest in reading significantly influences the scores of students' reading ability (Gambrell, 2011). Inferring is increasingly recognized as an essential component of the process of reading comprehension according to the psycholinguistic models of reading comprehension in which reading is involved in the interaction between textual information and prior knowledge of the reader. And with inferential comprehension, it is often described simply as the ability to read between the lines. It requires a reader to mix the literal content of a selection with prior knowledge, intuition, and imagination for guesswork.
In a reading text, the author does not always provide complete and obvious descriptions of information about the topic, a character, a 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com thing or an event. They do, however, provide clues or suggestions that reader can read and make inferences based on the information in the text or on the reader’s own background knowledge. According to Barrett (1974), literal comprehension focuses on ideas and information explicitly stated in the reading text while inferential comprehension needs thinking and imagination that goes beyond the printed page. To upgrade their inferential reading ability, students need to be able to handle complex texts characterized in 6 ways: relationships, richness, structure, style, vocabulary and purpose (Damrong, 2013).
It is clear that comprehension is an interactive process of “bottom- up” reading and “top-down” reading. That is to say, when readers read an article, they precede at least two activities: One is readers’ literal understanding of the article on the basis of words, phrases, and the other is readers’ reconstruction of new information by the use of background knowledge stored in their brains. The second activity is based on the presupposition of the first, i. this kind of readers’ cognition is set up on their own original cognition (Shen, 2016).
In Barrett’s (1974) Taxonomy of Reading Comprehension, subtasks that enable students to make inferences to infer supporting ideas, the main ideas, sequence, comparisons, cause-and-effect relationships, character traits, and predicting outcomes, inferring about figurative language as well. Students can also use inferential reading to help them with new or difficult vocabulary by figuring out antecedents for pronouns, the meaning of unknown words from context clues, and/or the grammatical function of an unknown word. Statement of the problem Firstly, unlike the grammar-focused English language teaching in the past, nowadays, English is taught with attention paid to four macro-language skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing. According to Nation (2007), a well- balanced language course should consist of four equal strands: meaning focused 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com input, meaning focused output, language focused learning, and fluency development.
Each strand should receive a roughly equal amount of time in a course. To keep pace with the trend of teaching English in the world, Vietnam has gradually changed the learning and teaching methods, curricula, teaching materials, and course books. Also, there have been numerous changes in testing, in which skills, especially reading skills, are paid much attention to in important national examinations annually. However, it can be seen that the results of students in reading comprehension, especially inferential reading tasks, are still low.
Inferential reading tasks are quite challenging for many students, and they tend to skip or ignore this part. Second, middle and high school students who struggle with reading have very few positive experiences with reading so their motivation to read is very low (Ivey & Guthrie, 2008). I found that a lot of students in my school had studied English for more than 10 years, but most them seemed to have low motivation and to pay little attention seriously to inferential reading tasks. When teaching students reading skills, mostly, I realized that they neglected inferential reading exercises.
Besides, the source of difficulty may be that poor readers do not consistently of effectively use their prior knowledge to answer inferential question (Gilliam, 2007). As a result, many students lack some of the higher level comprehension skills, which are necessary to construct a mental model of a text’s meaning to comprehend the implicit meaning of the text (Hogan, Bridges, Justice, & Cain, 2011). These skills include inferential skills addressed in this study. While, it is known that the longer the time students spent on reading the greater the probability that students’ reading comprehension success is affected positively (Mazzoni, Gambrall and Korkeamaki, 1999); however, in reality it seems to be wrong to my students.
To get more experienced to deal with that problem, it is necessary for me to figure out if there are any other factors that affected my students’ results such as motivation and attitude. 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Third, it is important to note that “strategies were valuable- neutral, not in themselves good or bad, but were used either effectively or ineffectively by individuals and by groups” (Grenfell & Erler, 2007, p. As a teacher- researcher, it is a duty and hope to help students use effective strategies to apply in inferential reading. Rationale I conducted the present study for two reasons: Firstly, I started my study based on my own interests and needs for my teaching career in terms of reading skills, especially in inferential reading skill.
The findings could be applied to my own teaching practices for better learning outcomes for my students to develop their inferential reading skills. Secondly, the study aimed to offer suggestions and recommendations for making positive change in teaching at high schools. This critical element was expected to help my colleagues in my high schools or teachers from other high schools, where the context is similar to the one described in the present study, to be able to make changes in their teaching practices. Aims of the study The study aimed: To find out students’ attitudes towards inferential reading tasks; To investigate the motivation factor affecting high school students ‘inferential reading result.
To find out the effectiveness of cognitive reading strategies towards inferential reading tasks students often apply in the school. In order to achieve the above aims, the following overarching research question has been formulated as follows: How are cognitive strategies beneficial to students in performing their reading tasks related to inference? 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.