MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ DANG HOANG NGOC THUY AN INVESTIGATION INTO OUT-OF-CLASS READING ACTIVITIES BY FOURTH - YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 60.11 SUPERVISOR: BAO KHAM, Ph. HUE, 2015 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ -------- ĐẶNG HOÀNG NGỌC THÚY MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG ĐỌC NGOÀI GIỜ CỦA SINH VIÊN KHOA TIẾNG ANH NĂM TƯ TẠI ĐẠI HỌCNGOẠI NGỮ HUẾ LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 60.11 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: TS. BẢO KHÂM HUẾ, 2015 STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself.
Signature Dang Hoang Ngoc Thuy i ABSTRACT This research aims at investigating the out-of-class reading activities by fourth-year English major students at Hue University College of Foreign Languages. The subjects of this study are fourth-year English major students and lecturers at Hue University College of Foreign Languages. The data are collected from the questionnaires and the interview and thoroughly analyzed by means of tables and charts. From findings and discussion, the results can be summarized as follows: (1) Most students have been aware of the importance of out-of-class reading activities and only 10% students always concern about this issue.
(2) According to 100 students surveyed about the reasons why they do not concern about out-of-class reading activities, the number of respondents with weak language competence ranks the highest position. It takes up 57%. (3) Different students carry out their reading activities with different purposes. Of all those purposes, “to learn something for themselves” is agreed on most of students (75%).
(4) Among students’ ways of reading, “looking at the table of content and choosing the favorite topic” is the most popular way of out-of-class reading activities. (5) The majority of students at HUCFL are dependent rather much on the dictionaries. They look up all the new words and write down the first translation of the unfamiliar words below the English word. (6) When students carry out their out-of-class reading activities, they pay attention to the content of the text.
(7) Most of students do out-of-class reading activities when they have assignment and they have to finish their work taken by teachers. (8) Students also have some problems about time; materials and knowledge which make them not have the best condition to learn. (9) Students state that they will carry out their out-of-class reading activities well if they have good motivation and find interested in them. In short, some pedagogical implications are made in the hope that students will have deep awareness of their out-of-class reading activities and conduct them successfully.
Limitations and further research are also included with the purpose to carry out if having reasonable chance. ii ACKOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, sincere gratitude is shown here for the assistance I have received during the writing of this thesis. This thesis could not have been completed without such ongoing support and other encouragement. It can be seen clearly that each person has each different way of learning.
As a Chinese proverb, “A teacher for a day will be the mentor for all your life”. It means that an apprentice not only learn from the master’s knowledge, but also learn from his or her attitudes. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, for his kind supervision, invaluable comments, and encouragement. It is memorial that he has an important role in the completion of this thesis.
As a student, I admire not only his wide knowledge in the relevant field, but also his serious attitude in work. He encouraged me to achieve accuracy and critical thinking as well as exact figure. Besides, he always encourages me to complete my study on time as well as explains my problems in doing research process. Moreover, he always keeps calm and behaves well when I have not finished my work yet.
Indeed, he is the greatest mentor I have met. I am very grateful to the teachers and students at HUCFL, who were perfectly willing to participate in my study. Without their enthusiastic cooperation, I would not have been able to complete my thesis. Additionally, I am truly grateful also for the constant support and encouragement of my parents.
Although last year, many unlucky things happened to me and my family; I had an accident and it took me one month at the hospital; my parents were always next to me to look after me as well as pay attention to my study and gave me the best condition to carry out my thesis. Especially, my mother always encourages me to finish my work. She does all housework, takes care of my family without any complaints. Finally, I would like to say thank this course, all venerable lecturers that give me an opportunity to become a student once again.
This is a wonderful chance for me to meet many interesting classmates and learn a lot of good things from them. iii CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. AIMS OF THE RESEARCH. SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH.
ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY .1 REVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES .1 Reading and Second Language Acquisition .2 Out-of-class Reading Contributes to English Learning .1 Concepts related to the study .1 Out-of-class English Learning Activities .2 The role of Metacognition in Reading Comprehension .2 Theory of reading .1 Definitions on reading .2 Objectives, role, importance, benefits of reading activity in language learning .1 Objectives of reading activity in language learning .2 The role of reading activity in language learning .3 The importance of reading activity in language learning .4 The benefits of reading activity in language learning .3 Types of reading activity. 20 METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH .1 Questionnaires for participants .2 Interviews for participants. 24 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .1 STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS OUT-OF-CLASS READING ACTIVITY .1 The evaluation of the importance of out-of-class reading activity .2 Students’ concern about out-of-class reading activity .2 STUDENTS’ TIME ON OUT-OF-CLASS READING ACTIVITIES .1 Place for out-of-class reading activities .2 Time for out-of-class reading activities .3 STUDENTS’ PURPOSES OF OUT-OF-CLASS READING ACTIVITIES .4 STUDENTS’ ORGANIGATION OF OUT-OF-CLASS READING ACTIVITIES .1 Students’ description of out-of-class reading activities .2 Determinants of students’ out-of-class reading activities .3 Students’ methods of out-of-class reading activities .5 DIFFICULTIES THAT STUDENTS OFTEN ENCOUNTER WHEN READING OUTSIDE THE CLASS .1 Difficulties about the time .2 Difficulties regarding learning conditions .3 Difficulties in terms of knowledge .6 FACTORS THAT MAKE STUDENTS’ OUT-OF-CLASS READING EASIER .1 Kinds of reading texts that attract students’ reading .2 Students’ fondness when first looking at a text .7 ILLUSTRATING AND ANALYZING RESULTS FROM THE INTERVIEWS. 48 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .1 SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS .3 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY.
54 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a foreign language ESL: English as a second language L2/SL: Second language HUCFL: Hue University College of Foreign Languages vii LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1: Students’ evaluation of the importance of out-of-class reading activities Table 4.2: Where students spend their time on out-of-class reading activities Table 4.3: When students spend their time on out-of-class reading activities Table 4.4: Students’ response to English materials Table 4.5: The source where students get materials Table 4.6: Kinds of reading text attract students’ reading Table 4.7: Students’ fondness when first looking at a text viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1: Students’ concern about out-of-class reading activities Figure 4.2: The reasons make students not interested in out-of-class reading activities Figure 4.3: Aims of out out-of-class reading activities Figure 4.4: Description of students’ out-of-class reading activities Figure 4.5: Determinants of students’ out-of-class reading activities Figure 4.6: Students’ methods of out-of-class reading activities Figure 4.7: Students’ response to out-of-class reading activities time Figure 4.8: The factors affect students’ out-of-class reading activities Figure 4.9: Students’ level of dictionaries sufficiency Figure 4.10: Students’ reasons not interest in out-of-class reading activities ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. BACKGROUND Nowadays, English is a compulsory subject in many schools from primary to university. It is also an international mean to communicate all over the world. Furthermore, Vietnam is the official member of World Trade Organization.
We are trying to make relationships with many countries and perfect our integration in every field. It is clear that English plays an important role in our life, especially in educational program. For that reason, a University graduate should be able to communicate well in his or her field. In my opinion, a good English majored student in Hue University College of Foreign Languages (HUCFL) needs to have good English skills.
It means that students have to be proficient at all main skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. Reading belongs to receptive skills when we learn a foreign language in general and English in particular. In English classes, no teachers can deny the key role of teaching reading skills. Reading is the first part that teacher should focus on it in a unit of a text book.
It is essential to teach reading. Reading is also considered as a helpful device to develop students’ ability of learning a foreign language and develop an ability to extract relevant information. In addition, reading is one of four important language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing when we learn a foreign language in general and English in particular. It is no doubt that reading skills as well as out-of- class reading activities plays an important role in learning English.
Therefore, there are numerous ways of reading, which can give students many opportunities to practice their reading skill by themselves. It can be seen clearly that there are many reasons why extensive reading is good for language development, especially in out-of-class reading. Extensive reading allows students to meet the language in its natural context and see how it works in extended discourse beyond the language met in textbooks. It also builds 1 vocabulary when students carry their out-of-class reading activities.
When students read a lot, they meet thousands of words and lexical (word) patterns time and time again which help them master them and predict what vocabulary and grammar may come next. Moreover, extensive reading helps students to build reading speed and reading fluency which allows them to process the language more automatically leaving space in memory for other things. In addition, it not only builds confidence, motivation, enjoyment and a love of reading which makes students more effective language users but also helps lower any anxieties about language learning the students may have. Besides extensive reading allows students to read or listen to a lot of English at or about their own ability level so they can develop good reading and listening habits and helps students get a sense of how grammatical patterns work in context.
Textbooks and other study materials introduce language patterns but typically they don’t appear often enough in a variety of contexts to facilitate a deep understanding of how the patterns work. RATIONALE I choose this topic for my research: AN INVESTIGATION INTO OUT- OF-CLASS READING ACTIVITIES BY FOURTH - YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES for the following reasons: Firstly, reading habit is very useful to language acquisition. Through reading, students can know what they are looking for and apply into their background knowledge. Also, students can find out what they do not know.
Moreover, reading is one of the most important skills of a foreign language in general and English in particular at HUCFL. In addition, when reading, the students are being active. Moreover, it is a certainty that active learning is far better that passive learning.