1 VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN THỊ MAI HẠNH USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS TO IMPROVE ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ READING SKILL AT THANH DO COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY (Sử dụng tài tiệu thực nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng đọc hiểu cho sinh viên chuyên ngữ trường Cao Đẳng Công Nghệ Thành Đô) Field: Methodology Code: 601410 Course: 16 MA MINOR THESIS Hanoi - 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 2 VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN THỊ MAI HẠNH USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS TO IMPROVE ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ READING SKILL AT THANH DO COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY (Sử dụng tài tiệu thực nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng đọc hiểu cho sinh viên chuyên ngữ trường Cao Đẳng Công Nghệ Thành Đô) MA MINOR THESIS Field: Methodology Code: 601410 Course: 16 Supervisor: Phạm Minh Tâm, M.Ed Hanoi - 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration. iii Table of contents. iv List of abbreviations .viii List of tables. ix Chapter 1: Introduction .1 Rationale for the study and research problem statement .2 Aims of the study .3 Research hypothesis and questions.
Methods of the study. Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Design of the study.
4 Chapter 2: Literature Review. Background of reading. Intensive reading and extensive reading. Authentic materials in EFL.
Definitions of authentic materials. 8 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Types of authentic materials. Considerations for selecting authentic materials.
Advantages of authentic materials. Disadvantages of authentic materials. The use of authentic materials in teaching reading. The stages of a reading lesson.
Applying authentic materials in teaching reading. Task authenticity and input authenticity. An overview of an action research. Rationales for the use of action research.
Applying authentic materials in extensive reading program. The researcher- The teacher. Pretest and Posttest. Procedure of data collection.
25 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Procedure of data analysis. Data from pretest and posttest. Data from the questionnaires.
27 Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion. Participants‟ attitudes towards the program. Participants‟ suggestions for the future program. 33 Chapter 5: Conclusion and Implications.
Limitations of the study. Suggestions for the future research. Pretest and posttest. I TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
Non-authentic material. Result of pretest and posttest .XXII TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 10 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AR : Action research ER : Extensive reading ERP : Extensive reading program IR : Intensive reading L1 : First language L2 : Second language ESL : English as second language EFL : English as foreign language TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 11 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Sumary of characteristics of intensive and extensive reading approaches……….7Table 2: An overview of an extensive reading…………………………………………….22 Table 3: The level of students‟ interest in reading lessons and the needs and expectations of the students in the classroom.28 Table 4: Descriptive statistics for the pretest and posttest of the treatment group……….29 Table 5: Participants‟ attitudes towards the program…………………………………….30 Table 6: Participants‟ suggestions for future program…………………………………… 32 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Rationale for the study and research problem statement Reading is one of the language skills that should be acquired by any students who learn English. It can provide the students with a richness of interesting information in a pleasant way.
Before we produce or make information, reading is needed to get and analyze information. Reading is the most crucial in getting certain information or knowledge available in magazines, newspapers, story books, brochures, and other reading materials. The purpose of teaching reading is to enable students to read English in the written form and comprehend the written materials. Reading will be successful if students may comprehend the written materials or the text well.
An effective reading activity involves active students to take apart actively in reading class whether in pre, while, and then in post-reading activities. However, in many English classes, students seem to be not motivated and active in reading activities. In this case, it is a challenge for teachers to consider techniques, materials, and atmosphere in teaching reading in which the students feel comfortable, curious, and motivated to learn the language enthusiastically. I was in charge of teaching English reading skill at class 5A, which has 30 major English second year students at Thanh Do College of Technology.
I saw that the students seemed to feel bored and uninterested to learn English especially when they faced a reading text from their textbook. The teaching and learning activities did not run effectively; because most of the students usually tended to keep silent when the teacher asked them to read the text individually in the silent reading, without knowing why they read and without caring what they were reading. Some students also tended to disturb and cheat other friends then made the class noisy when they did exercises. Realizing the problem faced by the students, I thought that it was very important to make reading lessons more interesting and efective by employing creative and interesting materials.
A reading course can be made more interesting if a variety of texts is used. The creative materials which still focus on the topics of subject that can be used here is authentic materials. Berardo (2006) says that: The use of authentic materials in the classroom is discussed, with the student benefiting from the exposure to real language being used in a real context. Other aspects which prove positive TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 13 when using authentic materials are that they are highly motivating, giving a sense of achievement when understood and encourage further reading.1) Authentic materials might be used more effectively to develop student‟s interest and motivation in learning reading comprehension.
They introduce life into the classroom so that they enable the students to comprehend the text easily because they are closed to their environment or their real world. From the fact mentioned above, it is of great urgency, scientific and realistic usage to lead an in-depth investigation on the application of authentic materials in reading in Viet Nam in order to affirm the effectiveness of a way to improve students‟ reading skill, and to create a relaxing and enthusiastic learning environment for students in reading lessons. This has inspired me to conduct this study to find solution to the situation. Aims of the study This research is designed to investigate the effectiveness of the use of authentic materials on second year students‟ readings skill at the Department of English, Thanh Do College of Technology.
The aims of the study are to: 1. Evaluate the effectveness of the use of authentic on students‟ achievement in reading comprehension in English. Investigate the students‟ attitudes towards using authentic materials in reading lessons. Propose some recommendations and suggestions for using authentic materials to improve reading skill by Vietnamese students.
Research hypothesis and questions In order to achieve the above-mentioned objectives, the study was designed to test the follow hypothesis: H1: Students who take part in the course with the text book and supplementary authentic materials will make more improvement in reading proficiency measured by a proficiency test than those who do the course with the text book only. The acceptance of this hypothesis would result in the injection to the following null hypothesis: TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 14 Ho: There is no difference in reading proficiency as measured by a proficiency test between students who take part in the course with the text book and supplementary authentic materials and those who do the course with the text book only. In order to reach the conclusion on which hypothesis would be accepted, the answers to the research questions that are presented below would be found: - To what extent is the use of authentic materials effective on the second year students‟ reading comprehension? - What are the students‟ attitudes towards using authentic materials for reading? 1. Methods of the study The method used in this study is an action research design which utilizes both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques with an aim to answer the research questions.
The author is also the practitioner who developed the reading program for the study by using the authentic materials. The data for analysis were collected from the Pre- questionnaire, Post-questionnaire, Pretest and Posttest. Scope of the study Authentic materials are such a broad topic that cannot be wholly discussed within the framework of this paper. Therefore, in this study, I will only focus on the impact of authentic materials on the second year students‟ reading comprehension.
The sources of authentic materials that can be used in the classroom are infinite, but the most common are documents, newspapers, magazines, TV programs, stories, movies, songs and literature, web pages…. For the research, the writer used authentic materials such as magazines, newspapers, and websites as the other sources for teaching reading comprehension besides the textbook as the guideline of the topic that will learn. The materials would also be supported by the teaching techniques of reading and technology media in order to reach the purpose of reading. Significance of the study The findings of the study will provide us a plenty of useful information.
First, the study will give us convincing information about the great value of using authentic materials in TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 15 improving students‟ reading comprehension. Second, the practical aim of the study is to suggest some appropriate techniques to make the best use of the authentic materials, so it is possible to have further improvement in making English reading lessons more motivating. Last, by doing this action research, the researcher can evaluate the actual use of authentic materials in her classes. Design of the study This study consists of five chapters: Chapter I introduces the rationale of the study, the aims, research questions, scope as well as the significance and design of the study.
Chapter II reviews the literature on the reading teaching in general and using authentic materials in reading in particular. Chapter III provides the reader with the detailed description of the subjects and the data collection instruments, and the procedure of the study. The data collection instruments include the pretest and the posttest and the questionnaires. The procedure of the study will be also mentioned.
Chapter IV presents the results and discussion of using authentic materials in reading, and of the student‟s attitude towards authentic materials. Chapter V offers a discussion of the major findings from which some pedagogical implications were derived from. This chapter also points out some limitations of the study and provides future directions for further research which are not touched upon in the limit of this thesis. CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.
Background of reading TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 16 Reading has been investigated from numerous perspectives- by linguistics, psychologists, educators and second language researchers. Different authors defined the term in different ways. This is partly due to the complexity of reading act. Frank Smith (1985) defines “reading is understanding the author‟s thoughts” (p.
Therefore, reading can be viewed as authentic materials cylindrical process of recognizing, understanding, comparing, and evaluating the information they encountered. From another view of reading, Alderson (2000) defines reading as “…an enjoyable, intense, private activity, from which much pleasure can be derived, and in which one can become totally absorbed” (p. Reading means different things to different people, for some it is recognizing written words, while for others it is an opportunity to teach pronunciation and practice speaking. However reading always has a purpose.
It is something that we do everyday, it is an integral part of our daily lives, taken very much for granted and generally assumed to be something that everyone can do.