VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES -------------------------------------- NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC AN APPLICATION OF AN DISCOURSE-BASED APPROACH IN TEACHING ENGLISH READING SKILL AT THANH HOA VOCATIONAL SCHOOL OF COMMERCE-TOURISM Ứng dụng phương pháp tiếp cận dựa trên ngôn bản để dạy kỹ năng đọc Tiếng Anh tại Trường Trung cấp nghề Thương mại-Du lịch Thanh Hoá M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English language teaching methodology Code: 60.10 Ha Noi - 2013 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES -------------------------------------- NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC AN APPLICATION OF AN DISCOURSE-BASED APPROACH IN TEACHING ENGLISH READING SKILL AT THANH HOA VOCATIONAL SCHOOL OF COMMERCE-TOURISM Ứng dụng phương pháp tiếp cận dựa trên ngôn bản để dạy kỹ năng đọc Tiếng Anh tại Trường Trung cấp nghề Thương mại-Du lịch Thanh Hoá M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English language teaching methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Dr. Lâm Quang Đông Ha Noi - 2013 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Declaration.
iii Table of contents. vi List of graphs, charts and tables. vii PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for choosing the topic.
Aims and objectives. Scope of research. Theoretical and practical significance of the study. Design of the study.
3 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW & THEORITICAL BACKGROUND 1. Definition of reading. The concepts of discourse and discourse analysis. The concepts of discourse.
The concepts of discourse analysis. Approaches to teaching reading comprehension. Discourse analysis and teaching of reading comprehension. Cohesion in reading comprehension.
15 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Rationale for the use of an action research. Steps for action research. The context of teaching and learning reading comprehension at Thanh Hoa Vocational School of Commerce-Tourism.
Action research procedure. 20 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 3. The results of the pre-test. The results of the pre-questionnaire.
The students‘ attitude toward reading skill. Difficulties faced by the students. Causes faced by the students. The result of the students‘ post-tests after the course.
The result of the questionnaires for the students after the course. Change in percentage of the students‘ attitude to reading comprehension after the application of discourse-based approach……………………………. Extent to which the application of a discourse –based approach help the students to read better. The students‘ assessment on the activities applying discourse-based approach.
The result of class observation. Implications for teaching English reading skill. Summary of the study. Limitations and suggestions for further study.
I v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a foreign language ESL: English as a second language vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF GRAPHS, CHARTS AND TABLES Graph 1. The students‘ score in the pre-test Graph 2. The first post-test score of the students Graph 3. The second post-test score of the students Chart 1.
The students‘ attitude toward reading part Chart 2. The students‘ s attitude toward reading part after the course Table 1. Difficulties faced by the students Table 2. Causes of difficulties faced by students Table 3.
A comparison of parameters between the pre-test and the two post-tests Table 4. Extent to which the application of a discourse-based approach help the students to read better Table 5. The students‘ assessment on the activities applying discourse-based approach Table 6. The students‘ assessment on the exercises applying discourse-based approach Table 7.
The students‘ assessment on the exercises applying discourse-based approach. vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for choosing the topic As we have known, in English, reading is one of the main means for learners to get information, which plays an important role in improving students‘ competence. So the teaching of reading is considered to be one of the most effective ways in English language learning.
According to Farhady (2005), ―reading is one of the most useful and necessary skills for daily life. People usually read because they want to obtain information about a specific subject‖. English reading class is aimed at making students master reading skills, widen their vocabulary, improve their grammar, and gain all types of knowledge and boost the students‘ reading ability because their ability of reading determines the amount of the information readers get. As Wenquan (2009: 1) states, ―Reading means decoding the discourse in the given text and encoding it into valuable information accordingly, often reflecting different implications and meanings according to the context.
Early readers of English must proceed beyond the utterance level and do more than follow the words to form-meaning‖. Reading is a complicated psycho-linguistic process and the interaction result between language and thought. To comprehend a text requires the readers to engage their related organs, background knowledge, and reading skills. Sellers (2000) asserts, ―the reading process is cognitively demanding because learners need to synchronize attention, perception, memory, and comprehension‖.
However, because of the influence of traditional teaching methods, at Thanh Hoa Vocational School of Commerce-Tourism, most of the teachers only focus on vocabulary and grammar in their teaching process; they ignore the application of discourse analysis while discourse analysis helps students to comprehend reading materials completely and deeply. Meanwhile, as far as the students are concerned, most are poor in English, especially reading. Their background knowledge about words, sentences and structures which they have learned is quite limited; they have 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com difficulty in mastering structures and getting main ideas of reading materials. Therefore, it is necessary to apply discourse analysis in teaching reading comprehension to improve reading skills for students.
Wenquan (2009: 2) suggests, ―Most EFL learners are able to understand the formal structures and logical meaning of the material they read with an average degree of difficulty and within general and familiar topics, but cannot understand the rhetorical and functional meaning of sentences, or sentences with specific topics or involving cultural differences. The basic reason may be their lack of training in discourse analysis and ignorance of even simplest discourse analysis techniques‖. For the reasons above, I have decided to choose the topic ―An application of a discourse-based approach in teaching English reading skill at Thanh Hoa Vocational School of Commerce-Tourism‖. Aims and objectives This study aims at exploring the effectiveness of the application of a discourse-based approach in teaching English reading skill at Thanh Hoa Vocational School of Commerce-Tourism.
The specific objectives of the study are: - To find out changes in the attitude of students at Thanh Hoa Vocational School of Commerce-Tourism after applying a discourse-based approach in teaching English reading skill. - To investigate what extent the application of a discourse-based approach helps students at Thanh Hoa Vocational School of Commerce-Tourism read better. Scope of research The thesis focuses on studying the application of discourse analysis in various approaches (top-down, bottom-up and interactive processes) to reading in the literature review and the application of cohesion (reference, conjunction, repetition, synonym, antonym and collocation) analysis in reading comprehension 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com in the action research procedure because these elements mainly count for in the text at the elementary level. The participants are the first-year students who I am teaching at the moment, which facilitates my research.
Theoretical and practical significance of the study The thesis is believed to be a good reference for teachers and students at Thanh Hoa Vocational School of Commerce-Tourism, especially to those who are teaching or learning reading skill. Design of the study This study is divided into three main parts: Part A. INTRODUCTION, presents the Rationale for choosing the topic, the aims and objectives, the scope, significance, methodology and the design of the study. DEVELOPMENT, has three following chapters: Chapter One presents the literature review which deals with the theoretical background that precedes and necessitates the formation of our research.
Chapter Two presents the methodology applied in the study including, action research, setting, participants, instrumentation and action research procedure. Chapter Three presents results and discussions, and implications for teaching English reading skill. CONCLUSION, reviews the findings and proposes possible solutions to the problems identified. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study are also put forward.
3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1. LITERATURE REVIEW & THEORETICAL BACKGROUND In this chapter, the fundamental theoretical concepts will be introduced. First of all, definitions pertaining to what is meant by reading and reading comprehension, discourse and discourse analysis, the backbone concepts of this research paper, are presented in 1.3 as prerequisites to the understanding of subsequent notions and models. Second, approaches to reading comprehension are discussed in 1.4, which are bottom-up, top-down and interactive processes.
Third, the discussions of discourse analysis and the teaching of reading comprehension are presented in 1. And at last the discussions of role cohesion in reading comprehension. Definition of reading There are many definitions about reading. Goodman (1971:135) believes that ―reading can be understood as an active, purposeful, and creative mental process where the reader engages in the construction of meaning from a text‖.
Hedge (2000) defines that ―reading is the interaction of two types: the reader and the text, and the reader and the writer‖. Richards and Schmidt (2002) state ―reading skills (reading micro skills) as abilities required for skillful reading such as discerning main ideas, understanding sequence, noticing specific details, making inferences, making comparison, and making prediction‖. However, Nunan (2003) believes that reading is a fluent process in which readers combine the information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning. From the researchers‘ points, it can be seen that there has been an interest on the ―readers‖ and on how they construct meanings from texts, which contributes to the proliferation of studies on reading.
Reading is not a ―passive skill‖; it is an active and creative cognitive process. Although there are so many definitions of reading, there is no definition covering all the aspects of the process as it happens in reality because of its complexity. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com In my opinion as a teacher, reading is a ―developmental process‖. Students learn to read and achieve the accomplishment by their knowledge of the language and the knowledge of the world gained from continuous and frequent learning and practice.
Reading comprehension Reading comprehension plays an important role in teaching and learning reading a foreign language. It can be understood as the process in which the readers can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind the forms. According to Grabe (2009: 46), there are two modes of reading comprehension ―…the text model and the situation model‖. In the text model, the reader is called for understanding what the text itself is trying to communicate and in the situation model, the reader is required to integrate background knowledge with text information to interpret the text.
Besides, Alderson (2000) presents two levels of reading understanding: ―literal understanding and text understanding‖. In addition, Swan (1975: 1) states, ―a student is good at comprehension‖ if ―he can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information of a text‖ and Grellet (1981: 3) defines, ―reading comprehension or understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible‖. Although these views are different, what comes up a common point is that reading comprehension is the process in which the readers can obtain the information as required in the reading text as efficiently as possible. The concepts of discourse and discourse analysis 1.
The concepts of discourse The term ‗discourse‘ is used in different senses depending on what school of discourse analysis one adheres to. Therefore there are different ways of defining discourse.