VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES PHẠM LAN ANH A STUDY ON USING SHORT STORIES IN TEACHING READING SKILL AT NGUYEN KHUYEN SECONDARY SCHOOL (Nghiên cứu về việc sử dụng truyện ngắn trong giảng dạy kĩ năng đọc tại trường trung học cơ sở Nguyễn Khuyến) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HANOI – 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES PHẠM LAN ANH A STUDY ON USING SHORT STORIES IN TEACHING READING SKILL AT NGUYEN KHUYEN SECONDARY SCHOOL (Nghiên cứu về việc sử dụng truyện ngắn trong giảng dạy kĩ năng đọc tại trường trung học cơ sở Nguyễn Khuyến) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Mai Thị Loan, PhD HANOI - 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CANDIDAT’ES STATEMENT I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:A STUDY OF USING SHORT STORIES IN TEACHING READING SKILL AT NGUYEN KHUYEN SECONDARY SCHOOL is the result of my own work for the Degree of Master of Arts at University of Languages and International Studies, Hanoi National University. The material in this thesis has not been submitted for assessment in any other courses of study.
Hanoi,2016 Signature Phạm Lan Anh i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOLEDGEMENT First of all, I would like to express my deep and faithful gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Mai Thi Loan, PhD. for her whole hearted and valuable guidance, significant suggestions and useful materials in the process of writing this thesis. Thanks to her noble devotion, the research report has been successfully completed. My sincere thanks were also presented to my classmates for their support and recommendations in choosing necessary materials so that I can fulfill this study.
Their sincere friendship has encouraged me a lot. I would like to thank to teachers and students at Nguyen Khuyen secondary school for their constructive suggestions and important help. Without their support, there would not be a completion of this thesis. I also thank our university library for their sources of books and documents about methodology studies.
In addition, I was grateful to researchers, authors and teachers whose materials suggest necessary information for my reference. My true family deserves my gratefulness for their long lasting help and encouragement so that I have been able to complete this study. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Reading comprehension has been highlighted as a problem among secondary school students. This study examined the effects of short stories on 80 seven grade students to show if the method had an impact on students‟ reading comprehension.
Besides, this research also figured out the suitable methods teachers used to exploit short stories in teaching reading skill. To serve this purpose, some instruments were used: pre-test, post-test; questionnaire for teachers and questionnaire for students. Although the findings revealed some limitations, the use of short stories helped students to improve their reading comprehension. The result in reading test showed a slight improvement on the students‟ average score.
In addition, the result from questionnaire and interview indicated both teachers and students had difficulties when teaching and learning reading through short stories. However, many suitable methods had been applied to help students and teachers overcome these obstacles and ensure the better use of short stories in teaching reading skill. It is thus recommended for further studies to minimize the challenge found in this study and vary kinds of short stories used in teaching English skills. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE CONTENT CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT.
iii LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES. iv PART I: INTRODUCTION. Rationale of the study. Aims and objectives of the study.
Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Method of the study. Design of the study.
3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT. 4 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Reading in foreign language teaching .1 Definitions of reading .2 Techniques of reading .1 Definitions of reading comprehension .2 Reading comprehension skills .3 Causes of poor reading comprehension among students .2 Short stories in language teaching .1 Definition of short stories.2 Benefits of short stories in language teaching .3 How to choose short stories in teaching language skills .3 Review of the previous related studies. 15 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY .1 Setting of the study .1 Teachers‟ background information .2 Students‟ background information .3 Teaching and learning condition at Nguyen Khuyen secondary school .2 Data collection instruments .3 Data collection procedure .4 Data analysis method. 21 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS .4Data analysis of pre-test .5Data analysis of post- test .2 Questionnaire for students.
25 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.1 Students‟ attitude towards short stories .2 Types of short stories students expect to learn .3 The activities students like most before reading a short story .4 Students‟ favorite activities while reading a short story .5 Students‟ favorite activities in the post-reading stage .3 Questionnaire for teachers .1 Teachers‟ frequency of using short stories to teach reading skill for students .3 Pre- reading activities .4 While-reading activities .5 Post-reading activities. 33 PART III: CONCLUSION. Pedagogical suggestions in using short stories in teaching reading skill.1 Strategies to improve comprehension skill .1 Encouraging the use of oral language .3 Providing practice in reading easy material .4 Encouraging purposeful reading .5 Stressing vocabulary development .2 Suggested activities in teaching reading using short stories. 37 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.1 Pre-reading activities .2While-reading activities .1Modeling reading strategies .2In-class oral reading .3Textual analysis and group work .3Post- reading activities.
Limitations of the study. Suggestions for further study. I APPENDIX 1: Some stories used in the study. III APPENDIX 3: Raw results of test marks .IX APPENDIX 4: The fomular of mean, median and standard deviation .XI APPENDIX 5: Survey questionnaire for students.
XVII APPENDIX 6: Câu hỏi khảo sát cho học sinh .XIX APPENDIX 7: Survey questionnaire for teachers .XXI APPENDIX 8: Sample lesson plan. XXIII vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES Chart 1: Frequency distribution (pre-test) .23 Chart 2: Frequency distribution (post-test) .24 Chart 3: Students‟ attitude towards short stories .25 Chart 4: Types of short stories students expect to learn .26 Chart 5: The activities students like most before reading a short story .26 Chart 6: Teachers‟ frequency of using short stories to teach reading skill .29 Chart 7: Class organization .30 Table 1: Data collection procedure .19 Table 2: Mean and Std.23 Table 3: Mean and Std.24 Table 4: Students‟ favorite activities while reading a short story .27 Table 5: Students‟ favorite activities in the post-reading stage .28 Table 7: Pre – reading activities .30 Table 8: While-reading activities .31 Table 9: Post- reading activities .32 Table 10: Reading assessment .32 viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study Reading comprehension, as a fundamental language skill, requires a complex acquisition process which can account for the way that learners comprehend what they read. Many of the Vietnamese students are suffering from the weakness in reading comprehension.
Especially, based on individual teaching experience, the researcher finds out that the capability of understanding English text of students at Nguyen Khuyen secondary school is very poor. The problem is that the 7th graders in this school lack the ability of reading comprehension, so because of misunderstanding the meaning of the text, they find it difficult to answer questions related to the specific text and get bad scores in reading tests. It is the reason why many students dislike, even fear of English classes. One of the main causes of this problem is because of the boring and unattractive traditional method most of teachers use in teaching reading comprehension.
This fact raises a question of how to make the students interested in reading English text and how the teachers choose the suitable materials that motivate students to read. In fact, many researchers and educators have made untiring attempts to find more efficient ways of enabling the learners to become more proficient readers. Teaching English through literature has become the fashionable phenomenon. Some researchers believe that teachers provide students with heavy, boring and somewhat redundant literature which has no use to solve students‟ problems and provides no room for creativity.
The students are taught literary terms, the meaning of words and the process of analysis; therefore, they take the form of repeating the material understanding mostly by memorization. The idea of using short stories in teaching comprehension may come as an effective way to deal with this problem. It helps students to cope with original texts, use the language creatively, improve their language level, loose themselves from the barriers of instructional texts and even learn some literature. 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Based on the explanation above, the researcher decides to conduct a study on using short stories in teaching reading skill for the 7th grade students at Nguyen Khuyen secondary school.Aims and objectives of the study The study aims at investigating the use of short stories in teaching reading skill for the seventh graders at Nguyen Khuyen secondary school.
To be more specific, the objectives of this study are to: - find out the degree of effectiveness of using short stories to teach reading skill for the 7th grade students at Nguyen Khuyen secondary school. - propose some suggestions to teach reading skill for students with the use of short stories 3. Research questions In order to reach the above aims and objectives, the study is going to seek answers for the following research questions: a. To what extent can reading short stories affect students‟ reading skill? b.
What are methods of using short stories in teaching reading skill? 4. Scope of the study In this study, the writer intends to deal with the questions that how effectively short stories are used in teaching reading comprehension for students, and what suitable ways of using short stories to teach reading skill are. The short stories used in this research are one page long with simple contents and various topics such as friendship, love and moral lessons. Significance of the study By looking into the perception of the use of short stories in teaching reading comprehension and the satisfaction of students about their achievement and improvement in reading skill, the study is hoped to raise teachers‟ awareness, especially teachers at Nguyen Khuyen secondary school about the application of short stories as a useful material source in their teaching process.
The research is 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com hoped to inform teachers of the benefits of short stories and suggest some effective ways of applying them in teaching English to make the lessons more interesting. Method of the study In order to achieve the aims of the study, the following data collection instruments will be used: (1) Tests for students (2) questionnaire for students (3) questionnaire for teachers The data collection time lasts 10 weeks from April to June 2015. Design of the study The study will be divided into three parts: Part 1: Introduction shows rationale, aims, objectives, research questions, scope, significance, methods and design of the study. Part 2: Development includes three chapters: Chapter 1, Literature review deals with some theoretical background relevant to the study: reading in foreign language learning, review of some methods and approaches for teaching reading and some benefits of short stories in language teaching Chapter 2, Research methodology focuses on the current situation of teaching and learning at Nguyen Khuyen secondary school, participants of the study, data collection instruments and data collection and analysis procedure.