Viet Nam National University - HCM CITY University of Social Sciences and Humanities ****************** A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) Submitted by NGUYEÃN THÒ TOAØN NGOÏC Supervisor TOÂ MINH THANH, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY - 2007 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: SELF-INSTRUCTION IN DEVELOPING READING SKILLS FOR STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION In terms of the Statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’s Programs Issued by the Higher Degree Committee. Ho Chi Minh City, June 2007 NGUYEÃN THÒ TOAØN NGOÏC. RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I, hereby state that I, Nguyeãn Thò Toaøn Ngoïc, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Thesis deposited in the library.
In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the library for care, loan and reproduction of thesis. Ho Chi Minh City, June 2007 NGUYEÃN THÒ TOAØN NGOÏC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my course lecturer and supervisor, Dr. TOÂ MINH THANH, for her explicit guidance and valuable support to the completion of my thesis. Without her whole-hearted guidance, I could not have finished the thesis.
I am also grateful to all my teachers for valuable and helpful instructions during the three-year Tesol course (2003 – 2006). I should also like to express my special thanks to the library staff of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities who help me with my search for reference materials. In addition, I am grateful to my colleagues, especially Mr. Ian Venn, Lecturer in B.
English studies, and Mr. Leâ Hoaøng Quaân, M.A of TESOL, New York USA, who were willing to participate in the questionnaire and give me helpful advice. Thanks also to my students for their cooperation in giving truly response to the questionnaire. Finally, my special thanks to my husband for his unfailing support.
ABSTRACT This thesis aims at discovering the non-majored English students’ level of self- instruction at the University of Technical Education (UTE) and the teachers’ perceptions towards this matter. It advanced suggestions about what to innovate the situation. To get these purposes, the research was carried out by means of two questionnaires. The former, which included 20 items addressing 5 different factors of self-instruction such as learners’ needs, learners’ motivation, learners’ strategies, learners’ self-confidence and learners’ autonomy, administered to first and second- year students.
The latter was designed for 10 English teachers who have experience of over 8 years at the UTE. In addition, there was an interview for the subject teachers because their viewpoints did contribute to the complete picture of students’ future professional needs. The findings proved that the students at the UTE had a low level of self- instruction, namely in reading skills. The results also showed that they lacked effective learning strategies.
Based on these findings, some recommendations were made to improve the students’ current situation. Implications from the research results focused on building students’ self- instruction by: Encouraging students’ intrinsic motivation and self-confidence; Helping students discover their own learning styles; Showing students the variety of available strategies; Enhancing the ability of cooperation and group cohesion; Emphasizing the application of technology in the students’ own learning. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1st sts : First-year students 2nd sts : Second-year students EM : Extrinsic motivation ESP : English for Specific Purposes IM : Intrinsic motivation UTE : University of Technical Education LIST OF FIGURES *********** Figure 2.1 Students' needs for the four basic language skills .2 Arrangement of the students' expectations of improvement in reading .3 (a) & (b) Students’ opinions of extensive reading .4 Proportion of students’ motivations for learning reading. 48 STUDENTS’ NEEDS Figure 4.5 Frequently applied reading techniques .6 Students’ frequency of reading extra English materials .7 Self-learner’s basic strategies .8 Students’ opinions of the importance of their major subjects to language learning.
55 STUDENTS’ AUTONOMY Figure 4.9 Students’ abilities to organize their own study time .10 Students’ efforts into trying to understand difficult things .11 Students’ ability to question the matter in hand .12 Students’ awareness of their learning styles .13 Students’ awareness of self-assessment.15 Preference in teaching and learning reading .16 Teachers’ opinions of the out-of-class extensive reading task. 65 LIST OF TABLES ************** Table 1.1 The first stage of the English course at the UTE .1 The traditional and contemporary trends in Education .2 Self-learners’ basic strategies.3 Efficient and inefficient reading. 31 STUDENTS’ NEEDS Table 4.1 Students’ needs for the four basic language skills .2 Students’ expectations towards reading.3 Students’ opinions of the relationship between English and other subjects.4 Students’ opinions of reading skills .46 STUDENTS’ MOTIVATIONS Table 4.5 Students’ motivations for learning reading.6 Students’ preparations for reading tasks .48 STUDENTS’ STRATEGIES Table 4.7 Students’ preferred learning strategies.8 Frequently applied reading techniques .9 Self-learner’s basic strategies. 52 STUDENTS’ SELF-CONFIDENCE Table 4.10 Factors positively influencing students’ reading tasks.11 Factors negatively influencing students’ reading tasks.
54 TABLE OF CONTENTS ************* Page Certificate of originality. i Retention and use of the thesis. iv List of abbreviations. v List of figures.
vi List of tables. viii Table of contents .1 STATEMENT OF THE PURPOSE .2 PREVIOUS RESEARCHES IN RELATED FIELDS.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY .4 ASSUMPTIONS OF THE STUDY .5 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY.6 DELIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY .7 DEFINITIONS OF TERMS.8 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS. 8 CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY.1 DESCRIPTION OF THE ENGLISH COURSE AT THE UTE .2 DESCRIPTION OF PHYSICAL SETTING. 13 INTRODUCTION Self-instruction is an important part contributing to students' acquisition.
It helps students with not only reaching the current educational aims but also meeting requirements for further education. It comes as no surprise to hear that we are in "the age of the learner". In class the teacher is responsible for only part of the time, and the remainder is for the learner. According to Dickinson (1991: 2), ”self-instruction must be judged by its effectiveness as a learning mode - that is, it must be judged by the success of learners in learning a foreign language.” Self-instruction contains such elements as learners' awareness of needs and goals, attitude, motivation, and autonomy.
Autonomy is achieved slowly, through struggling towards it, through careful training and careful preparation on the teacher’s part as well as on the learner’s part. This process allows the development of learner independence and responsibility. This study aims firstly at identifying the elements of self-instruction and secondly at finding out how self-instruction is involved in the students' development of reading skills at the UTE. It suggests effective ways of helping students to improve themselves in the learning process.1 STATEMENT OF THE PURPOSE In contemporary approaches to language teaching and learning, learners are encouraged to develop an ability to carry out creative and imaginative learning projects outside the language classroom.
They should develop independence and learn how to use the language as a working tool to achieve their main objectives. Bearing these ideas in mind, I appreciate the term “self-instruction” which emphasizes an increasing degree of responsibility for learners’ own learning while “self-study” describes a mode of self-instruction where the learner relies on specialist language-learning materials produced by others. Self-instruction is more efficient than classroom instruction in terms of development and teaching time. Also, “it may mean a learner using materials which designed to guide his every step and leave little freedom of choice, or it may describe a situation in which the learner design his own course and makes decisions about when and how he is going to be assessed.” (Dickinson 1991: 16) The subjects of the study are 382 students at the UTE.
They are good at mathematics, but not at learning language. Quite often, they consider English as an unimportant subject in their undergraduate program with the help of their language teachers, the students need to foster their self-instruction to improve their academic skills. Unfortunately, almost all the decisions about learning have been taken by the teacher, and thus the students have had no the opportunity to decide things for themselves. This means that they have failed to develop the ability to learn by themselves or to work out what works best for them as individuals.
In today’s rapidly- changing world, however, such an ability is increasingly important as members of the national workforce are continually required to learn new skills and absorb new information. Learning how to learn should thus be a vital component in any educational course. Moreover, self-instruction can help students to reach wider educational goals (Dickinson, 1991: 27). To sum up, this study aims to answer the following three research questions: 1.
Is there a strong spirit of self-instruction among the students at the UTE? 2. What elements affect the students' self-instruction? 3. How can teachers foster the students' self-instruction in developing reading skills? 0.2 PREVIOUS RESEARCHES IN RELATED FIELDS It seems that a considerable number of researchers have paid adequate attention to ways of helping students to develop their proficiency in reading and to become self- learners. Among them are various applicants for an M.
in TESOL, those who made great efforts to contribute something to the improvement of language teaching and learning. Nguyen Thi Thanh Thao (2005: 79) had a critical look at reading style preferences of the ESP students at Ton Duc Thang University. She emphasized that in all classrooms, there may be students with multiple learning styles. So are there in the reading classes.
She also thought that “at metalcognitive level, there may be other factors other than reading styles that are closely related to learners’ reading process such as learners’ beliefs for reading their feelings, their motivations.” Pham Van Giao (2005: 26) was interested in Teaching of English reading skills. He addresses the five following factors concerning the teaching process of English reading skills: motivation, environment, textbook, reading strategies and satisfaction. In term of reading strategies, he suggested that teachers should ask students to begin a program of vocabulary development by reading as much as possible. Investigating into EFL reading difficulties to resolve the problems at Soc Trang College of Education, Lam Quang Tuyet Minh (2005: 81) came to a conclusion that the difficulties were caused by: - The students’ different levels of English proficiency; - The differences in English study program before college; - The teachers’ training method; - The problem of current textbook.
In addition, Laâm Quang Tuyeát Minh (2005: 81-82) showed some factors that may help students overcome their reading problems: - The teachers’ improved strategy method; - The positive additional reading material; - The appropriate tasks and activities in additional materials. For the sake of self-learners, Duong Tran Thy Diem (2005: 74) carried out a research to find out how to improve the self-study of pre-intermediate English non- major students at Van Hien University. She reported that the students’ motivation and interest should be developed in the learning process. In other words, “the students should work for acquiring knowledge and skill, not just for grades.
With such a meaningful goal, they will be strongly motivated to study and make the most of their self-study time to activate their English outside the class.” In addition, the author emphasized the importance of learning how to learn successfully and of teacher- student partnership. She concluded that both the teacher and his students should be actively involved in the process of building up the students’ good habits of self-study. Appreciating the above-mentioned researchers’ work to improve their students’ process of learning English, the author of this MA thesis has come up with some findings from her related fields and advanced some aspects of self-instruction in developing reading skills for her students at the UTE.