VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY — HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE THE EFFECTS OF PARAPHRASING STRATEGY ON READING COMPREHENSION OF NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT A UNIVERSITY IN HCMC A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature in partial fulfillment of the Master‘s degree in TESOL By PHẠM TỐ QUYÊN Supervised by PHAN THANH HÙNG, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY, FEBRUARY 2022 ACKNOWLDEGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Phan Thanh Hùng, my thesis supervisor, for his unwavering support. During my preparation and completion of the thesis, he provided me with insightful discussion, considerable inspiration, and valuable guidance.
I deeply appreciate the way he read and corrected my thesis writing in detail with constructive feedback. I would not have finished the thesis if it hadn't been for his incredible patience and professional expertise. Second, I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Đinh Văn Chương and Mrs.
Võ Thị Thanh Lý for allowing me to conduct my research on students at HCM University of Information Technology. Also, I would like to acknowledge my debt to all the students who supported me during the time I did the experiment. Thirdly, I sincerely extend my profound gratitude to all the lecturers at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities for their valuable guidance and encouragement in my education. Throughout my tenure at the university, they were constant in their personal and professional support, which endowed me with many research skills.
Furthermore, I would like to thank Mr. Tiêu Tiểu Long and Ms. Nguyễn Thị Hoài Anh for their proofreading and comments on my writing. They always gave me an impulse to accomplish my thesis.
Last but not least, I am deeply indebted to my family for their encouragement and assistance during the months I studied for my MA in TESOL. i STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I certify that this thesis, entitled ―The Effects of Paraphrasing Strategy on Reading Comprehension of Non-English Major Students at a University in HCMC,‖ is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted to any other institution for the award of a degree or diploma. Ho Chi Minh City, January 2022.
Ho Chi Minh City, January 18th, 2022 Phạm Tố Quyên ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, Phạm Tố Quyên, as a candidate for the Master of Arts in TESOL degree, accept the university's requirements for the retention and use of master's theses deposited in the library. Theses should be accessible for study and research purposes, in accordance with the library's normal conditions for the care, loan, and reproduction of theses. Ho Chi Minh City, November 1st, 2021 Phạm Tố Quyên iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLDEGEMENTS. i STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY.
ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. viii LIST OF TABLES.
xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .1 Background to the study .2 Aims of the study .6 Scope of the study .7 Organization of thesis chapters. 3 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Definition of reading comprehension .2 Definition of paraphrasing strategy .3 The metacognitive process .2 Definition of reading strategies .4 The meta-cognitive process of paraphrasing .5 A paraphrasing strategy to improve main idea comprehension .6 Definition of attitudes .7 The importance of attitudes in language learning .9 Previous studies on the use of paraphrasing strategy and Gaps .2 Context of the study .4 Procedures for teaching the paraphrasing strategy .1 Develop and active knowledge .2 Discuss the paraphrasing strategy .3 Model the paraphrasing strategy .4 Support the paraphrasing strategy .5 Procedures for teaching the paraphrasing strategy in the experimental class .1 The content of the questionnaire .2 The content of the questionnaire on attitudes and perception .3 Reliability of the questionnaire .7 Data collection procedure .8 Data analysis procedure .1 Analyzing the pre-test and post-tests .2 Analyzing data from the questionnaire .9 Summary of the chapter. 43 CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .1 Descriptive analysis of the tests .1 Descriptive analysis of the pre-test results .2 Descriptive analysis of the post-test results .1 Students‘ attitudes toward their use of paraphrasing strategy in the classroom .2 Descriptive analysis of the questionnaires .4 Reading Comprehension perception .4 Summary of the chapter. 56 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS .1 Summary of findings .2 Implication of PS .3 Limitations of PS .4 Recommendations for future studies.
68 APPENDIX A - PRE-TEST. 68 APPENDIX B – POST-TEST 1. 79 APPENDIX C – POST-TEST 2. 89 APPENDIX D – POST-TEST 3.
98 APPENDIX E – THE VIETNAMESE VERSION OF THE QUESTIONAIRE 108 APPENDIX F – QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL GROUP. 110 APPENDIX G – SAMPLE READING LESSON PLAN OF THE EXPERIMENTAL GROUP. 112 APPENDIX H – SAMPLE LISTENING LESSON PLAN OF THE CONTROL GROUP. 115 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS PS Paraphrasing Strategy RC Reading Comprehension UIT University of Information Technology CG Control Group EFL English as a Foreign Language EG Experimental Group ESL English as a Second Language SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences viii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Description and estimated reading grade for Flesch Reading Ease Score (Flesch, 1948) .1 Levels of English classes based on students' placement test scores .2 lists general information about the study participants and the participants' gender .3 Readability level and length of reading passages in the book ‗ETS TOEIC TEST 2019‘ .4 Readability level and length of reading passages in the book ‗ETS TOEIC TEST 2020‖ .10 The organization of the questionnaire and its related categories .11 A summary of the questionnaire on attitudes and perception .12 The summary of the questionnaire .13 The Cronbach‘s Alpha statistic of the questionnaire .14 The total statistics of all items in the questionnaire .5 Coding scheme for the two Likert scales .1 Descriptive statistics of the participants' scores in the pre-test .2 The participants‘ homogeneity in RC competence .3 Results of post-test 1 of the experimental and control groups .4 Independent samples t-test for post-test 1 of the experimental and control groups .5 Results of post-test 2 of the experimental and control groups .6 Independent samples t-test for post-test 2 of the experimental and control groups .7 Results of post-test 3 of the experimental and control groups .8 Independent samples t-test for post-test 1 of the experimental and control groups .9 Summary of the results of the three post-tests .15 Results on students‘ enjoyment of PS .16 Results on students‘ confidence .17 Results on students‘ reactions to future use of PS.18 Results on students‘ perception.
54 x ABSTRACT Reading comprehension (RC) at the University of Information Technology (UIT) frequently necessitates a high level of literacy as well as a good realm of comprehension strategies. Notwithstanding, due to discrepancies in the results of studies in the domain, the effects of the PS on student RC are still being disputed. A quasi- experimental design was conducted to analyze the effects on the RC of non-English major students. 46 first-year non-English major students from 2 general English classes were conveniently selected to serve as an experimental group (EG) receiving PS, and a control group (CG) receiving no PS treatment.
During research implementation from September 2020 to December 2021, both the experimental and control groups were given a baseline pre-test and three post-tests. According to the results of the independent T-student test analysis, the EG significantly surpassed the CG in the RC tests. Moreover, the participants expressed positive attitudes toward the application of the PS through the questionnaire results. The key findings revealed that students were able to transcend beyond their RC level and apply an authentic RC of the text once they learned and correctly applied the PS.
The pedagogical implications for the PS in RC were included in the discussion. KEYWORDS: paraphrasing strategy (PS), Reading comprehension (RC), EFL, non-English major students. xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter describes the introduction of study. There is a statement of why the study is important, what it is going to be about, what it is going to look at, and how the thesis is going to be organized.1 Background to the study Reading is one of the most crucial aspects of language acquisition.
This is a crucial ability since it may assist learners in learning the language process. Students' fundamental English language skills, such as vocabulary, speaking and writing skills, thoughts, facts, and student experience, can all benefit from reading (Lai et al. As a result, students must read in order to improve their language learning. The main goal of reading in language learning is for people to understand what the text is about.
Academic reading is essential for students‘ performance in school and can assist them in obtaining knowledge, which is one of the reasons why reading lessons are taught in schools and colleges. Although academic reading is a time-consuming, serious, and complicated activity, it necessitates the development of a vast variety of reading strategies to assist learners in solving problems when they experience comprehension issues. Teachers must use interesting reading strategies to help students improve their RC in response to the above issues. There are a variety of reading strategies that instructors may employ, and one of them is the PS, which is a versatile technique that entails three steps: reading the text; identifying the text's main ideas and details; and finally, converting the reader's understanding into their own words (Hagaman & Casey, 2017).
They also feel that the PS is a means to increase students' reading ability through effective strategies for RC ability (Surayatika, 2018; Suwana et al. Students should view strategic RC training as a helpful approach since it allows them to better grasp and apply the information in the text, store it in their memory, and remember it (Deshler & Lenz, 1989; Hagaman et al. 1 Therefore, PS should be taught before or during the summarization in RC (Watson et al. PS has piqued the interest of various researchers in the field of RC throughout the last two decades.
This research used participants of various ages and areas, ranging from children to teenagers, from eastern to western countries, to look into various elements of PS's impact on RC. However, few studies have looked into the impact of PS on non- major university students' RC, especially in the Vietnam Nam context. The researcher's interest was piqued, so the researcher decided to undertake this study to look at the impacts of PS on the RC of non-English major university students.2 Aims of the study The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of teachers' use of paraphrasing strategies when teaching non-English major students reading comprehension. Additionally, it seeks to ascertain students' perceptions of their use of the paraphrasing strategy in the classroom.3 Research questions To accomplish the intended objective, this study was conducted to answer a research question: ―What are the effects of paraphrasing strategy (PS) on reading comprehension (RC) of non-English major students at a university in HCMC?‖ Two subsidiary questions were created to solve the primary research question: 1.
Is there a substantial difference in the RC test results of non-English major students who received PS versus those who did not receive PS treatment? 2. What are students‘ attitudes towards their use of PS in the classroom? 1.4 Hypotheses 2 Through comparing the test results of the experimental and control groups, the effects of PS on students' RC are examined. As a consequence, the hypothesis proposed for this study is that the teacher‘s use of the PS in RC classes can help students improve their performance on RC tests.5 Significance of the study Some past studies also clarify the effects of the PS on RC for learners. Nevertheless, few researches, particularly in the Vietnamese context, has looked into the effect of PS on non-major university students' RC.