VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ĐẶNG THÚY HẰNG A STUDY ON THE TEACHERS’ TEACHING TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING THE READING SKILLS OF FRESHMEN AT HANOI COLLEGE OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS (Nghiên cứu các thủ thuật dạy học của giáo viên nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng đọc cho sinh viên năm thứ nhất tại trường Cao đẳng Kinh tế Công nghiệp Hà Nội) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 01 11 HANOI, 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ĐẶNG THÚY HẰNG A STUDY ON THE TEACHERS’ TEACHING TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING THE READING SKILLS OF FRESHMEN AT HANOI COLLEGE OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS (Nghiên cứu các thủ thuật dạy học của giáo viên nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng đọc cho sinh viên năm thứ nhất tại trường Cao đẳng Kinh tế Công nghiệp Hà Nội) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 01 11 Supervisor: Dr. Trần Thị Thu Hiền HANOI, 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com DECLARATION I, Dang Thuy Hang, hereby certify that this minor thesis entitled “A study on the teachers’ teaching techniques for improving the reading skills of freshmen at Hanoi College of Industrial Economics” is the result of my own research in the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post Graduate Studies - University of Languages and International Studies – Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Hanoi, April 2014 Signature Đặng Thúy Hằng i TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS On the completion of this thesis, I would like to give my sincere thanks to many people for their encouragement and assistance during the preparation of my thesis. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr.
Tran Thi Thu Hien, who has been most willing and ready to give me valuable and helpful guidance, advice and support during the most difficult time of thesis construction. Without her help, this thesis would not have been made possible. I would also like to express my thanks to the lecturers and the staff of the Departure of Postgraduate Study at College of Foreign language for their useful lectures and careful guidance. My special thanks also go to English teachers in Foundation faculty, at Hanoi College of Industrial Economics for their enthusiastic participation and constructive suggestions for the development of the study.
And I also wish to express my thanks for the great cooperation from the freshmen in the classes: CKX12.10 in the data collection of my study. Last but not least, my sincere thanks go to my family who give me much motivation, energy and support in accomplishing this challenging work. ii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ABSTRACT This study investigates the real situation of teaching and learning reading skills at HCIE for freshmen and providing some suggested reading teaching techniques for the teachers to help teachers and students teach and learn reading skills more effectively. To attain these objectives, three kinds of instruments are applied such as survey questionnaire, observation and semi- interview.
Ten English teachers and one hundred students are selected to be participants of the survey. Necessary data are gathered using questionnaires for both students and teachers. Contributing to these data, observation is used to get useful information at CKX12.8 where is experimented some effective teacher’s teaching techniques. In addition, five teachers are randomly chosen to give their opinions about their real teaching experience, difficulty and solutions.
From the findings, the study depicts that while students are passive and demotivated in learning, the teachers’ techniques are dominated by traditional approach which are not effective enough to improve students’ reading skills. Basing on the research’s results, some recommendations for the students, the teachers and the authorities are stated. In conclusion, this study’s findings contributes a better understanding of teaching and learning reading techniques in general and teachers’ reading techniques in particular; however, some debatable points are unavoidable in this thesis. iii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration………………………………………………………………………….iii List of abbreviations………………………………………………….…viii List of tables and figures …………………………….ix PART A: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………….
Rationale of the study……………………………………………………………1 2. Aims of the study……………………………………………………………. Scope of the study…………………………………………………………. Significance of the study…………………………………………………….
Structure of the study……………………………………………………….5 Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………. An overview of the nature of reading skills……………………………. Definition of reading………………………………………………. The importance of reading in foreign language teaching and learning….
Teaching reading skills………………………………………………………. The objectives and goals of teaching reading…………………………. The reading teaching/ learning approaches……………………. Techniques for teaching reading……………………………….
Factors affecting teaching and learning reading…………………. The reading text……………………………………………….17 Chapter 2: THE STUDY…………………………………………………………18 2. An overview of Hanoi College of Industrial Economics…………….……18 iv TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Teachers and teaching methods………………………….
Students and their background English knowledge…………………. Data collection procedure…………………………. The survey questionnaires……………………………. The class observation ……………………….
The semi-interview………………………………………. To the students …………………………………………………. To the teachers…………………………………………………. To the authorities…………………….
Limitations and Suggestions for further studies………………….I v TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT: Communicative language teaching EFL: English as foreign language ESL: English as second language ESP: English for specific purposes HCIE: Hanoi College of Industrial Economics NCLRC: National Capital Language Resource Center NHWP: New headway pre-intermediate OU: Open University Ss: Students Ts: Teachers ULIS, VNUH: University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi vi TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND FINGURES Table 1: Students’ and teachers’ attitude toward the course book (p 23) Table 2: Students’ attitude toward the reading activities (p 24) Table3: Students’ attitude toward the teacher’s techniques and preferring techniques (p 25) Table 4: Teachers’ technique of combination and its efficiency (p 26) Table 5: Teachers’ responses concerning Pre-reading activities (p 26) Table 6: Teachers’ responses concerning While-reading activities (p 27) Table 7: Teachers’ responses concerning Post-reading activities (p 28) Table 8: Students’ and teachers’ attitude toward supplementary texts (p 29) vii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale On the road of integrating and developing in Vietnam, English is quite important to learners. The teaching and learning of English is paying much more attention by both teachers and learners. Nowadays, a lot of universities require their students to learn English as one of their general subjects.
In order to master English, students have to try their best to develop the English skills such as listening, speaking, writing and reading. There have been debates on the topic: which skill in English teaching and learning is the most important? There are some who state what they need is only speaking English fluently. Some disagree with that idea. They consider writing is vital because documenting reports, letters, etc are what they daily deal with in their work and life.
In contrast, there are still some who propose listening is more important for the realization of their goal. However, among these skills, according to the writer, reading is the most important one because it helps not only develop other skills but also provides learners knowledge of the target language. Reading is also benefit for the students in a lot of aspects in acquaintance of a new language. This topic interests a lot of researchers to put their passion on.
One of the famous scholars whose reputation is not able to forget Grellet (1981) with his famous book on reading such as “Developing reading skills” In addition, many Vietnamese authors and researchers pay much attention to this issue. For example “A study on how to improve the teaching of reading English in Economics to the 2nd year students at Hanoi national Economics University” by Trang (2005) refers to reading skill in Economics only, and “ A study on how to improve ESP reading skills for the students of Information Technology” mainly focuses on reading skills for Information Technology students by Huong (2003). Hop (2008) also concerns this topic in her MA thesis “Improving reading skills of Post Graduate Students at College of Natural Sciences, VNU by developing the reading materials”. Although this subject gains a lot of interest from researchers and linguistics, there have not been any researchers who does research on the teacher’s reading techniques.
This is one of the main reasons which raises the interest for the author to do this research. -1- TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com As an English teacher of a college in Hanoi which testing is mainly based on grammar structures and reading texts, the researcher realizes that both teachers and students have difficulty in finding the effective way to teach and learn reading skills. Moreover, in order to improve learning environment and teaching quality, there is a need of investigation to expose the new road for all subjects in general and reading skills in particular at the college. With the effort of my own, a study is carried out to find which reading techniques are more effective for improving the quality of teaching and learning reading skills at HCIE.
That is the reason why my graduate paper is “A study on the teachers’ teaching techniques for improving the reading skills of freshmen at Hanoi College of Industrial Economics”. Aims of the study This paper aims at: - Investigating the real situation of teaching and learning reading skills for freshmen at HCIE. - Providing some suggested reading teaching techniques for the teachers to help teachers and students teach and learn reading skills more effectively. Research questions To reach the above aims, the thesis works to answer two following research questions: - How reading skills are being taught and learnt at HCIE? - What reading techniques should be applied to improve the reading skills of freshmen at HCIE? 4.
Scope of the study This study focuses on improving the reading skills of freshmen at HCIE. Efforts to study the improvement of other skills, for students of other years at other institutions are above the scope of the study. Methodology With the purpose of investigating the teachers’ teaching techniques for improving the reading skills of freshmen at HCIE, this study employs a survey research. To achieve this aim, the survey questionnaire is used as the main instrument to collect -2- TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com the needed data from the students and the teachers.
Besides, other instruments are also made used of such as the researcher’s observation in reading lessons, and the semi-interview for English teachers. Significance of the study In the light of CLT, to find suitable techniques for teaching and learning reading requests a lot of enforce from both teachers and students. In relation to this, an investigation on the teachers’ teaching techniques for improving the reading skills of freshmen at Hanoi College of Industrial Economics is implemented. To this end, the result of this study is believed to have potential contribution to the following two aspects: Firstly, in theory, this thesis once more time approves the reading background.
It adds into reading skills a strong point to consolidate the teaching reading methodology. Secondly, in practice, the paper is beneficial for teacher trainers and educators who have a role in teaching and training to improve reading practice. In addition, it is able to contribute to English teachers who can use the results to reflect on their practice to improve their reading lessons. Moreover, researchers who are interested in classroom practice may use the findings as a stepping-stone for further investigation that could lead to the improvement of teaching reading for second year students in or out of HCIE.
Structure of the study The study includes three main parts: The first part is the Introduction. The writer states the rationale for choosing the topic of the study, the aims of the study, the research questions, the scope of the study, methodology, the significance of the study and the structure of the study. The second part is the Development which is divided into three chapters. Chapter one presents the back ground knowledge of reading skills.