HOW TO TEACH READING COMPREHENSION COMMUNICATION Liễu Thị Tuyết Mai i CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify that this thesis entitled “ How to teach reading comprehension communicatively” is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institution. Ho Chi Minh City, September 3, 2009 Lieu Thi Anh Mai ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, MA. Phan Thi Kim Loan for her insightful discussions, constructive criticisms, valuable comments and continuing support in the preparation and completion of this thesis.
I am greatly indebted to all my teachers for their dedication and helpful instruction during the course. I would also like to thank the teachers and my students at Thoai Ngoc Hau highschool for their assistance in completing the questionnaires and contributing valuable comments on teaching and learning in this school. I would appreciate the whole staff of the Post-Graduate Department and Department of English Linguistics and Literature at the University of Social Sciencies and Humanities for the useful lectures and professional guidance. Finally, I would like to thank my teachers and classmates of the Post-Graduate Program in TESOL for their teaching, encouragement and suggestions about reference materials.
iii ABSTRACT Teaching English in high school tends to focus on the reading skill, which is an important skill that is of great use to students later in their lives. However, in spite of the great effort and considerable amount of time spent on teaching and learning reading, high school students are not good at reading. This thesis sets out to investigate the reality of teaching and learning the reading skill at Thoai Ngoc Hau high school. Findings reveal that teachers focus mainly on teaching vocabulary and pay more attention to the decoding of the meaning of the words and neglect other important factors such as context, text coherence, text organization; and reading strategies such as skimming, inferring, predicting are unfamiliar to the students’ experience.
This situation has lasted for years and years. It seems that teachers are either not well trained in teaching reading skill or too pessimistic about changes. They follow the established procedure of teaching texts in high school i. reading aloud, teaching vocabulary, translating and doing exercises.
The situation suggested is to retrain teachers and suggest some solutions to improve the impediments at Thoai Ngoc Hau high school so that they can cope with the tasks of teaching the reading skill rather than teaching texts. There is an urgent need to persuade teachers that changes are absolutely necessary for the situation of teaching English in Thoai Ngoc Hau high school to improve. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality …………………………………………………………… i Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………. iii Table of contents ………………………………………………………………….
iv List of tables ………………………………………………………………………. Aims of the study and overview of the research ………………………………. Significance of the study ………………………………………………………. 3 CHAPTER 1 : BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY ……………………….1 Description of the English courses and syllabus ……………………………….1 Aims and objectives of the English textbooks …………………………….2 Time distribution for the implementation of the syllabus ………………….2 Characteristics of the teaching staff and the students …………………………….1 Characteristics of the teaching staff ……………………………………….2 Characteristics of the students ………………………………………………5 1.3 An overview of teaching and learning reading comprehension in highschool ….
6 CHAPTER 2 : LITERATURE REVIEW ………………………………………7 2.1 Theories about reading and reading comprehension …………………………….1 What is reading? …………………………………………………………….2 What is “reading comprehension”? …………………………………………8 2.3 What is involved in the reading process? ………………………………….4 The contrast of efficient reading and inefficient reading ………………….5 The role of context in reading comprehension …………………………….6 Reading purposes and strategies ……………………………………………13 2.2 Approaches related to teaching reading comprehension ……………………….1 The Grammar Translation Method ………………………………….1 Overview of the research ………………………………………………… 26 3.3 Data collection method ………………………………………………………… 27 3.2 The reading comprehension test ………………………………………….1 Data collection procedure of the questionnaires ………………………… 30 3.2 Data collection procedure of the reading test …………………………… 30 3.3 Data collection procedure of the interviews ……………………………. 30 CHAPTER 4 : RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS ………………………….1 Responses to survey questionnaires …………………………………………….2 Analysis of teachers’ responses ………………………………………………… 32 4.3 Analysis of students’ responses …………………………………………………46 4.4 Analysis of the reading test results …………………………………………….5 Analysis of interviews …………………………………………………………. 58 CHAPTER 5 : RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION ………………59 5. 62 Appendix 1 Questionnaire for teachers ( English version ) ………………………… 62 Appendix 1 Questionnaire for teachers ( translated version ) ……………………….66 vii Appendix 2 Questionnaire for students ( English version ) ………………………… 70 Appendix 2 Questionnaire for students ( translated version ) ……………………… 74 Appendix 3 Proficiency reading test ……………………………………………….
77 Appendix 4 Focus group discussion ………………………………………………. 86 viii LIST OF TABLES Chapter 4 Table 4.1a Teachers’ opinions on the importance of reading skill to highschool students Table 4.1b Teachers’ opinions on the position of reading skill in students’ English books Table 4.2 Frequency of students’ reading aloud in an English class Table 4.3 Teachers’ opinions on the teaching procedure they used in a reading class Table 4.4 Teachers’ strategies in teaching a reading text Table 4.5 Frequency of teachers’ teaching reading in class Table 4.6 The frequency of using different techniques in presenting new words Table 4.7a Frequency of teachers’ ways of teaching reading in class Table 4.7b Comparison between students’ and teachers’ reports in the questionnaires Table 4.8 Frequency of teachers’ using kinds of test Table 4.9 Teachers’ difficulties in teaching reading Table 4.10 Activities used by teachers in teaching reading Table 4.1 Students’ concept of reading Table 4.2 Means of students’ use of reading strategies Table 4.3 Frequency of students’ setting purposes Table 4.4 Frequency of students’ kinds of books to read Table 4.5a Statistics of time for study and entertainment Table 4.5b Figures of time for study and entertainment Table 4.6 Frequency and mean of students’ self-remark and assessment of reading in English Table 4.7 Students’ opinions on difficulties in reading a reading comprehension text Table 4.8 Factors which facilitate students to understand the text best Table 4.9a Students’ opinions on the necessity of vocabulary in helping students comprehend the text Table 4.9b Students’ method of dealing with new words while reading a text Table 4.10 Students’ method of learning new words Table 4.1 Results of correct answers of the reading test Table 4.2 Frequency of students’ reading test results ix 0 INTRODUCTION To keep pace with the development of our nation’s economy and the cultural interaction between Vietnam and other countries, learning languages, especially learning English, has become a constant need all over the country. Reading proficiently in a foreign language is beneficial to every learner. Reading in the target language helps enhance knowledge of everything in modern life, from reading traffic signs and advertisements, to traveling, understanding culture and accessing the Internet, which helps high school students a lot after they enter the universities because they can read the articles or the documents related to their specific fields which are so abundant in English.
In high school, English is taught as a compulsory subject with the orientation to train the four skills: listening, speaking, writing and reading to the students and reading skill is considered important to the students at Thoai Ngoc Hau high school. The study reported in this thesis examines the reality of teaching and learning reading comprehension at Thoai Ngoc Hau high school to find out whether the method teachers used to teach reading comprehension can really develop students’ reading skill and suggest some solutions to improve teaching reading comprehension at Thoai Ngoc Hau high school. This introduction presents the problem of the study, aims of the study and the overview of the research, and the significance of the study.The problem of the study “ Reading skill plays an important role in learning English because reading well helps us to find out the information or chat on the Internet, read the English newspapers and travel to the other countries in the world” said many students at Thoai Ngoc Hau high school. However, it’s difficult for them to read proficiently because they aren’t taught reading strategies.
As a result, students can’t develop their reading skill, especially they find it difficult to become independent readers. As a teacher of English with the experience of 5 years teaching at Thoai Ngoc Hau high school, I see that when teachers come to teaching a reading text, they usually follow a procedure : the teacher explains and writes new words on the board, students read the words after the teacher first and then they read the text aloud in turns before 1 answering questions or doing comprehension exercises provided below the text. If there is time left, the teacher asks students to summarize the text or translate it into the mother tongue. As a result, students can’t develop their reading skill because they can’t read the reading text by themselves and they can only understand the reading text with much help from their teacher.
The reasons why they apply this method to teach their students are said to be due to limited time and the construction of the reading text. However, there are also some teachers who apply Communicative Approach to teach students, which have some positive feedback from some students. For example, the students can guess the meaning of the words based on the context in the reading text. In addition, they can get the main idea of the reading text without teachers’ translating into Vietnamese.
Moreover, students become more active and know what to do when learning in groups or pairs. Therefore, the author feels that teaching reading comprehension by Communicative Approach should be applied more here in order to improve students’ reading skill and help students become independent readers without much help from the teachers. Unfortunately, at TNH school, it’s hard to apply this method because of such constraints as time or the construction of the reading text. This thesis attempts to suggest some ways to teach reading comprehension more efficiently at Thoai Ngoc Hau high school so that students can be more involved in classroom activities and have the habit of reading which will be useful for them in their study at universities.
The students can read English materials which support knowledge for their major. Thanks to the habit of reading by themselves at high school, students become independent learners when entering the university. That helps them a lot in their study because learning at the university requires a lot of self-study, creation and discovery. Besides, this thesis also suggests some solutions to overcome the difficulties that the teachers encounter when applying Communicative Approach to teach reading comprehension, which helps teachers teach reading comprehension more effectively.
Aims of the study and overview of the research: The aims of the study are: (1) to find out how reading comprehension is taught and learnt at Thoai Ngoc Hau high school, (2) some suggestions to improve the impediments. In addition to the present chapter – the introduction – identifying the 2 problem and providing an overview of the thesis, and the conclusion closing the thesis, the thesis consists of five main chapters: Chapter 1 provides the background to the study. In particular, it describes English courses at high schools, provides a brief look into the approaches to teaching the reading skills in high school, characteristics of the students and the teaching staff. Chapter 2 consists of two parts which review the theories of teaching and learning reading comprehension as well as the methods or approaches related to teaching and learning the reading skill.
Chapter 3 presents the methodology employed in the study. Chapter 4 includes an analysis and discussions of the findings provided by the questionnaires from teachers and students and students’ reading test scores. Chapter 5 draws conclusions about the implications of the findings and suggests an approach to teaching reading to develop students’ reading skill at Thoai Ngoc Hau school.