Luận văn thạc sĩ obstacles and favourable materials for extensive reading on 9th graders at hoai hai lower secondary school = những khó khăn và tài liệu yêu thích cho việc đọc mở rộng của học sinh lớp 9 trường THCS hoài hải

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

TRUONG THI BICH NGOAN

OBSTACLES AND FAVOURABLE MATERIALS
FOR EXTENSIVE READING ON 9TH GRADERS
AT HOAI HAI LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOL

Field: Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching
Code: 8140111

Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. NGUYEN QUANG NGOAN


BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO
TRƢỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN

TRƢƠNG THỊ BÍCH NGOAN

NHỮNG KHĨ KHĂN VÀ TÀI LIỆU U THÍCH
CHO VIỆC ĐỌC MỞ RỘNG CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 9
TRƢỜNG THCS HOÀI HẢI

Ngành: Lý luận và phƣơng pháp dạy học bộ môn tiếng Anh
Mã số:

8140111

Ngƣời hƣớng dẫn: PGS.TS Nguyễn Quang Ngoạn

i

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I confirm that the work presented in this research report has been
conducted by myself. Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis,
no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the
thesis. I confirm that this work is submitted in partial fulfillment for the M.A.
thesis in English at Quy Nhon University and has not been submitted
elsewhere in any other form for the fulfillment of any other degree or
qualification.
Quy Nhon, May 2022

Trƣơng Thị Bích Ngoan


ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Assoc.
Prof. Dr. Nguyen Quang Ngoan who spent the valuable time on giving me
instructions, advice, constructive comments, and encouragement. This thesis
would not have been completed if it had not been for my supervisor‟s great
support.
Secondly, I would like to thank my colleagues who encouraged me and
shared with me much experience in thesis writing.
Thirdly, I am also grateful for all the students in my class who
participated in the study, giving me useful insight into the research problem.

Finally, thanks to all my family support, I was able to complete the
thesis on time.


iii

ABSTRACT

The benefits of extensive reading (ER) have been convinced by much
literature. The employment of ER helps improve EFL learners‟ reading abilities and
motivation. However, there remain many questions of obstacles and favorable
reading materials, confirmed by EFL learners. These findings seemed to receive less
scholarly attention, especially in Vietnamese context. As an attempt to understand
this research phenomenon, the current study employed a questionnaire and face-toface interview to gather the insights of 90 ninth graders at Hoai Hai Lower
Secondary School. They were invited to confirm obstacles and favorable materials
for extensive reading within the semester. Five voluntary interviewees expressed
their perspectives later on these findings. The results revealed major obstacles to the
students‟ extensive reading practice were the limited command of language, low
reading motivation, poor reading comprehension abilities, limited cultural or world
knowledge, lack of reading resources, and lack of technological support. The
favourable materials were ones related to school exams and students‟ needs. The
students were particularly interested in their own favorite topics, and this motivation
decreased when they had to read teachers‟ assigned reading materials. This study,
therefore, may give specific ideas for local EFL teachers to adapt language
materials suited to students‟ needs, in the hope that they could improve their reading
comprehension abilities and motivation in the future.
Key words: extensive reading, reading comprehension, reading motivation


iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ................................................................... i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................. ii
ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................... iii
ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS .................................................. vi
LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................... vii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1
1.1. Rationale ................................................................................................. 1
1.2. Aims of the study and research questions ............................................... 4
1.3. Scope of the study ................................................................................... 4
1.4. Significance of the study ......................................................................... 5
1.5. Organization of the study ........................................................................ 5
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................... 7
2.1. Reading ................................................................................................... 7
2.1.1. Definitions of reading ....................................................................... 7
2.1.1. Extensive reading ............................................................................ 10
2.2. Approaches to teaching reading in the second language classroom ..... 12
2.3. Use of extensive reading in reading teaching ....................................... 15
2.4. Possible difficulties of students in extensive reading ........................... 16
2.5. Previous studies on extensive reading in reading teaching .................. 18
2.6. Summary ............................................................................................... 26
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................................ 27
3.1. Research design..................................................................................... 27
3.1.1. Case study ....................................................................................... 27
3.1.2. The current research design ............................................................ 28
3.2. Data collection instruments................................................................... 28
3.2.1. Questionnaire .................................................................................. 28

v
3.2.2. Semi-structured interview ............................................................... 30
3.3. Sampling and participants ..................................................................... 30
3.4. Data collection ...................................................................................... 31
3.4. Data analysis ......................................................................................... 31
3.5. Summary ............................................................................................... 32
CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ............................................ 33
4.1. Main findings ........................................................................................ 33
4.1.1. The obstacles ................................................................................... 33
4.1.2. Favorable materials ......................................................................... 42
4.2. Discussion ............................................................................................. 50
4.2.1. Research question one .................................................................... 50
4.2.2. Research question two .................................................................... 52
4.3. Summary ............................................................................................... 54
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .................. 55
5.1. Conclusions ........................................................................................... 55
5.2. Limitations ............................................................................................ 58
5.3. Recommendations ................................................................................. 59
5.3.1. For local students ............................................................................ 59
5.3.2. For local teachers ............................................................................ 59
5.3.3. For future research .......................................................................... 60
REFERENCES ................................................................................................ 62
APPENDICES


vi

ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS
ER

Extensive reading

EFL

English as a foreign language


vii

LIST OF TABLES
Table

Title

number

Page
number

Table 4.1

Obstacles to extensive reading

33

Table 4.2

Reasons for the difficulties

38

Table 4.3

Favorable materials for extensive reading

42

Specific favorable extensive reading topics shared

48

Table 4.4

by the interviewees


1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Chapter one presents the introduction of the study. This chapter
discusses five parts, namely rationale, the aim of the study and research
question, the scope of the study, the significance of the study, and the outline
of the study.
1.1. RATIONALE
Researchers have proven reading to be an essential skill in our life when
it keeps our mind updated, healthy and bright during our lifetime. Good
reading skills are essential for effective daily communication, knowledge and
skill acquisition, researching for academic purposes, business cooperation and
operation, etc. (Heilman, 1967; Grabe & Stoller, 2000). Watkins (2017)
discussed reading as “incredible human achievements” that allow people to

communicate “across both space and time”. Reading is a complicated skill
that can only be learned by continuous practice and effort of the people on the
purpose of communicating, learning, or achieving knowledge. Reading,
together with writing, is the scale to evaluate a person‟s literacy: a proficient
reader will have better opportunities in learning and working than others, and
higher literacy is often linked to the reduction of poverty in many countries
(Giovetti, 2020).
Reading is one of the macro skills in language teaching and learning and
is highly evaluated by educators, teachers, and students for its functions in
students‟ study progress (Brown, 2001). The skills allow students to have
efficient access to the wide knowledge that is communicated among different
regions and areas, leading them along the pathway of broadening their
horizons of life skills and knowledge. Students mastering competent reading
skills will find their gaining new knowledge and skills much easier and with


2
much better performance and speed during their study. Thus, learning to read
efficiently and proficiently takes time. It takes memorizing rules and
practicing methods and techniques; it takes long-term and continuous practice
with reading for larger knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical structures, and
ideas.

However, this effort will prove valuable in students‟ school

performance and during their lifetime (Nunan, 1991).
As reading is important, it has been among the priorities of language
teaching to provide students with the appropriate tools to achieve the skills
effectively. In Vietnam, the distinctive features of English from Vietnamese
in discourse, style, grammar, and vocabulary have resulted in inevitable

difficulties for students. However, since the consciousness that reading is the
major skill in English language acquisition, educators, teachers, and students
have paid much concern over the practice of reading comprehension (Dang,
2012; Dung, 2020; Truong, 2018) and have suggested extensive reading as
one of the solutions to the needs of reading improvement. Extensive reading
refers to reading in large amounts and a wide range of topics for the readers‟
pleasure to absorb the advantages of the written materials and upgrade the
readers‟ reading comprehension skills (Nation & Waring, 2020). When
readers are free to choose the extensive reading materials, they will be
enjoying reading them to know more about the topics for background
knowledge; therefore extensive reading is an integrated means to study
reading as well as other language skills.
The literature review has brought to the researcher‟s mind the studied
and potential difficulties with students when they practice extensive reading
activities. Students may be challenged by the given extensive reading
materials (Day et al, 1998) for the materials‟ level is higher than their level;
they may find extensive reading difficult for their lack of vocabulary (Nation


3
& Ming-tzu, 1999) or lack of general knowledge to comprehend the reading
text. Other difficulties may be the culture difference (Nation & Waring,
2020), learning environment, the teacher-student relationship, the curriculum,
teaching method, time for reading (Westwood, 2002), and even the language
metalinguistics problems (Chan & Dally, 2000). Among the many difficulties
that the students may encounter during their reading practice, the researcher‟s
hope is to analyze and compare the literature with the actual situation
reflected in the collected data.
The reality of students‟ difficulties that secondary students face during
their reading lessons can be observed when they often meet with difficulties

in extensive reading practice for their lack of vocabulary, inadequate
grammatical structures, and wrong application of reading strategies, etc. The
problem of students‟ reading ability appeared in the researcher‟s class when I
gave them extensive reading assignments to find that they took longer time
than given to fulfill the requirements. This reality encouraged me to carry out
a case study to find out the major obstacles that the students met with when
they were facing extensive reading and work out the favorable extensive
reading materials that may help in teaching reading to students.
The assumption of the students‟ difficulties relating to the reading and
extensive reading is from their lack of vocabulary, grammatical structures,
and reading strategies shortage or wrong use. Therefore the researcher
intended to deliver questionnaires and intensive interviews to collect students‟
opinions and toward the reading practice. The questionnaires had two parts,
part 1 consisted of 7 questions asking students‟ opinions about their interest in
extensive reading, the importance of extensive reading in learning reading
skills, and their difficulties in extensive reading practice. The questions also
investigated students‟ reasons for their difficulties in extensive reading, as


4
well as their suggestions for the activities that may help them improve their
extensive reading. Part 2 of the questionnaire encouraged students to state
their favorite reading materials and sources.
The questionnaires were first delivered to 10 students to find out whether
their answers match the initial anticipation of the researcher. The data
collected from the small-scale of students were inputted and analyzed so that
the researcher decided to continue to apply the questionnaire to the remaining
students of the researching population.
Intensive interviews were then delivered to 12 randomly picked students
to collect their detailed statements about the major difficulties that they face

with extensive reading and the reasons for those difficulties. The interviews
aimed at finding students‟ favorite materials for extensive reading so that the
researcher can collect more precise and valuable data for the study.
1.2. AIMS OF THE STUDY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The aim of this research is to study the difficulties the students have
when they practice with extensive reading, and to work out the appropriate
extensive reading materials that can be used to the students; therefore the
study is conducted to study the questions:
1. What are the obstacles ninth graders at Hoai Hai Secondary School
face with in extensive reading?
2. What are the favorable materials for ninth graders at Hoai Hai
Secondary school in extensive reading?
1.3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study was carried out with 90 students who study in classes 9A2,
9A3, 9A4 of Hoai Hai Secondary School. The study was based on the survey
questionnaires and interviews with the students. It restricts the conclusion


5
only to the collected data when the students‟ opinions and performance were
gathered among this population of students only. Furthermore, the focus is on
obstacles and favourable materials in extensive reading.
1.4. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
After the study, the teacher-researcher can have a more intensive
understanding of students‟ difficulties in their extensive reading as well as
improve teaching methods in teaching reading. The findings of the study will
help the teacher determine the favorable extensive reading materials that are
appropriate for students‟ reading practice. Moreover, the study will help
students realize their obstacles in reading skills, encouraging them in their
further language study.

1.5. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
The study consists of five chapters:
Chapter 1, Introduction, introduces the the rationale, aim of the study
with the research questions. The scope of the study, the significance of the
study, and an introduction to the thesis structure are presented in this chapter
as well.
Chapter 2, Literature Review, discusses the literature related to different
authors on teaching reading approaches and the application of the extensive
reading approach on teaching reading. Some studies on students‟ difficulties
in reading were also reviewed.
Chapter 3, Methodology, states the research questions, the data
collection instruments, the research methods, the participants, and the
research procedures.
Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, analyses and discusses the data and
the lists of major findings of the study.


6
Chapter 5, Conclusions and Recommendations where conclusions are
written based on the major findings and discussion in the previous chapter for
better use of extensive reading materials to teach reading.
The final section of the thesis contains the appendices showing all
documents concerning or used in the study.


7

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
Chapter 2, Literature Review, is composed of four sub-sections. The first
section discusses the theoretical background of reading and extensive reading

including the definitions of reading and types of reading. The second section
studies some approaches to teaching reading in the second language
classroom. The third section gives summaries of relating studies of applying
extensive reading into the teaching of reading in the classroom, and students‟
difficulties in extensive reading practice. The last section summarizes key
points studied in this chapter.
2.1. READING
2.1.1. Definitions of reading
Reading is a complex but basic skill in human life (Anderson et al, 1985)
that measures a person‟s achievement from his childhood and during his
lifetime. According to Anderson et al (1985), reading can be compared to a
symphony orchestra for its characteristics of comprehension, life-long effort,
and the multiple ways of interpretation of a text. The researchers also defined
“Reading is a process in which information from the text and the
knowledge possessed by the reader act together to produce meaning. Good
readers skilfully integrate information in the text with what they already know.”
They generated five principles of reading that orient its achievement: (1) reading
is a constructive process, in which the meaning from the same text can be
different greatly among people for the difference in their knowledge, (2) reading
must be fluent, in which the background ability is identifying individual words
and the higher skill is decoding the words quickly and accurately, (3) reading
must be strategic but flexible depending on the complication of the text, the
familiarity of the text, and the reading purpose of the readers (4) reading requires


8
motivation as the key to readers‟ success, and (5) reading is a continuously
developing skill like playing musical instruments by the readers‟ long-term
practice” (p.7-18). RAND Reading Study Group (2002) discussed reading as
“the process of extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and

involvement with written language” (p. 11). More recently, Purcell-Gates et al.
(2016) argued that reading definitions must go further by addressing the process
as it occurs in the context of "socioculturally constructed literacy practices" (p.
1218), which includes the values, beliefs, and power relations that characterize
those practices, such as those related to language, gender, ethnicity, religion,
economics, and geopolitics.
Reading has been playing a vitally important role in human‟s long
history of survival and development, presented by its various advantages and
notably positive effects on other language macro and micro-skills as well as a
diverse application into different aspects of life (Brown, 2001; Gunderson,
2013; Pearson & Johnson, 1978; Watkins, 2018). Either in printed form or
electric form, reading has maintained the constant central keys to the voyage
of acquiring new knowledge, skills, and technology of human beings.
Reading and applying new things into life allowed people to make progress
through the years so that people could record their knowledge and hand it
over from generation to generation (Heilman, 1967; Krashen, 1982). In
another study, Alyousef (2005, P.143) recommended automatic recognition
skills,

vocabulary

and

structural

knowledge,

discourse/content/word

background knowledge, synthesis, and evaluation skills and strategies, and

metacognitive knowledge and skills monitoring as general component skills
and knowledge areas in reading.
In modern EFL situations, reading is highly appreciated by students for
its value in acquiring language skills and knowledge (Brown, 2001).


9
Researchers have paid much concern as to defining reading, researching
effective reading comprehension strategies which should happen to make
readers improve their background knowledge and linguistic competence.
Grabe (1991) had an intensive discussion that many researchers attempt to
understand and explain the fluent reading process by analyzing the process
into a set of component skills: (1) auto recognition skills could be understood
as perceptional or identificational skills; the development of these skills was
critical to fluent reading ability; (2) Vocabulary and syntactic knowledge had
a vital facilitative impact on reading comprehension as the fluency of readers
depended on the number of vocabulary they knew; (3) Formal discourse
structure knowledge was the knowledge that readers were expected to master
since they would better understand the text by knowing how it was organized,
(4) Content/word background knowledge had a major impact on readers‟
comprehension of the text when they read, evaluated and compared the
information they were reading with their sources of knowledge they had
already been experiencing, (5) Synthesis and evaluation skills/strategies
helped the readers to predict from the text, so the skills played a critical role
to reading comprehension , (6) Metacognitive knowledge and skills
monitoring presented its importance in the readers‟ language knowledge,
structure and organization recognition, and proper strategies use for specific
targets in reading practice (P.379-382). Krashen (1982, P.23) stated: “Reading
is good for you. The research supports a stronger conclusion, however.
Reading is the only way, the only way we become good readers, develop a

good writing style, an adequate vocabulary, advanced grammar, and the only
way we become good spellers.”, and Brown (2001) mentioned the „SQ3R‟
effective series of procedures for approaching a reading text:
1. Survey: Skim the text for an overview of main ideas.


10
2. Question: The reader asks questions about what he or she wishes to
get out of the text
3. Read: Read the text while looking for answers to the previously
formulated questions.
4. Recite: Reprocess the salient points of the text through oral or
written language.
5. Review: Assess the importance of what one has just read and
incorporate it into long-term association.
(P.315)
Comprehending a reading text, according to scholars, entails more than
just comprehending the meaning of the words or the structures utilized; it also
entails the interpretation of signs, the realization of sophisticated cognitive
processes, and the comprehension of intrinsic conventions. Reading
comprehension is a cognitive and selective process in which readers must
demonstrate their background knowledge, linguistic competence, strategy
application, and critical evaluation of what they have learned from the text
(Hedge, 2000).
2.1.1. Extensive reading
For its practical and useful application in language acquisition and
reading comprehension improvement, there are many definitions of extensive
reading that have been given by different researchers (Nation & Waring,
2020). The authors stated that extensive reading is the case of “each learner
independently and silently reading a lot of material which is at the right level

for them” and involves comprehension so that learners should gain
information from the input. The reading content should be interesting and
motivating so that it can encourage the learners to read, comprehend and
acquire some language skills (Krashen, 1982, Nation & Waring, 2020).


11
Extensive reading is reading in large quantity, normally outside the
classroom, often in free time for information, pleasure, or expansion of
knowledge or vocabulary (Krashen, 1982; Day et al, 1998). Extensive reading
brings a lot of benefits to students, varying from knowledge, meaning,
pleasure, to confidence and enthusiasm. Extensive reading gives students
much exposure to the rich context of reading materials for large vocabulary
input. Krashen believed that developing a large vocabulary is the necessary
part of mastering a language that is most associated with implicit learning of
vocabulary through reading, and reading comprehensible input plays the most
valuable source of vocabulary acquisition.
According to Day et al (1998, P.188), a successful extensive reading
program should contain the key characteristics:
1. Students read large amounts of printed material;
2. Students read a variety of materials in terms of topic and genre;
3. The material students read is within their level of comprehension;
4. Students choose what they want to read;
5. Reading is its own reward;
6. Students read for pleasure, information, and general understanding;
7. Students read their selection at a faster rate;
8. Reading is individual (students read on their own);
9. Teachers read with their students, thus serving as role models of
good readers;
10. Teachers guide and keep track of students‟ progress.

In a foreign language curriculum, extensive reading plays an important
role in students‟ language acquisition (Day, 2015), including student‟s
improvements in grammar understanding, reading speed, and reading
fluency; therefore, it has often been used by teachers and educators as a
practice in reading teaching methodology.


12
2.2. APPROACHES TO TEACHING READING IN THE SECOND
LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
Along with the improvement of language teaching worldwide,
approaches to teaching reading have been intensively and extensively
researched for further application and studies. Westwood (2002) discussed the
two main approaches to teaching reading in the second language classroom:
meaning-emphasis and skill-based approaches.
Meaning-emphasis approaches believe that students will acquire the
necessary skills and strategies of reading via incidental reading. Using this
approach, the teachers often combine different teaching methods and design
programs that provide real materials with words in context rather than in
isolation.
Meaning-emphasis approaches consist of methods referring to “whole
language” such as “shared book experience”, “guided reading”, “literaturebased reading” and “language-experience approach” (Westwood, 2002, P.4041). When teachers conduct these approaches, they should follow the list:
- reading good literature to children every day and having „real‟
literature available for children to read for themselves
- providing time each day for shared reading
- discussing and reflecting upon stories or other texts
- encouraging silent reading
- providing daily opportunities for children to read and write for real
purposes
- encouraging children to invent the spelling for words they do not know

- adopting a conference-process approach to writing (drafting, sharing,
editing, and revising with feedback from teachers and peers)


13
- assisting children with any particular aspect of reading and writing at
the time they require such guidance (the „teachable moment‟)
- teaching specific skills always within the context of material being
read or written
- integrating language and literacy activities across all areas of the
curriculum.
(Westwood, 2002, P. 40-41)
The guided-reading approach, a popular reading teaching method as
mentioned above, has been introduced by many researchers (Heilman, 1967;
Nation & Waring, 2020; Willis, 2008). The approach is based on the belief
that a reader will have optimal learning when they are instructed and
supported by guidance from the teachers, which provide students with
effective reading strategies and proper practice.
The skills-based approach is the opposite use of approach to meaningemphasis approach when teachers believe that they should teach their students
of the component skills and strategies for the reading process. Skills are:
“phonemic awareness, letter recognition, all levels of phonic decoding, sound
blending, sight recognition of words and the identification of unfamiliar
words by analogy with known words.” And the strategies consist of “selfquestioning while reading, self-monitoring, self-correction to restore meaning,
identifying and summarising main ideas, predicting, inferring and evaluating
critically what is read.”
There are at least three teaching methods that are termed skills-based
approach to reading: synthetic phonics (words are broken into the smallest
units of sound), analytic phonics (reading from the words level), and analogic
phonics (students read and decode words they don‟t know when reading by
using the parts of words they have learned) (Westwood, 2002). Using the

14
synthetic phonics approach, the teachers begin with sounds and letters, then
step on to word-forming and decoding so that their students can practice
having better auditory discrimination, skills of sound-blending, and the ability
to store and restore the relationships between sounds and symbols from their
long-term memory. Teachers may prefer and apply the analytic phonics
approach by building the foundation of letter-to-sound correspondences
among their students, for the analytic approach works with meaningful units
of words, while the synthetic approach works with meaningless units, which
are phonemes and letters. Extensively, some teachers may apply the
combination of the two approaches for a better teaching method. The third
approach, the analogic phonics approach, is used to teach students to
recognize spelling patterns as syllables and rimes. Students are expected to
have all the skills for the previous two approaches, in addition to the spelling
patterns and “visual-sequential memory span to process”. The last approach is
often combined with either of the above-mentioned approaches for easier
process and better achievement of students (Westwood, 2002; p. 42-44).
There have been many criticisms of the skills-based approach; some
researchers are concerned about a risk that students will fail to enjoy reading
by the boring drill and practice activities, some others argued the difficulties
of generalization of the teaching practice, some discussed the inappropriate
teaching methods to children at early ages, and some even pointed out that
“learning phonics actually makes reading more difficult.” (Westwood, 2002).
However, the teaching of phonics has been researched, analyzed, and
supported by other researchers. In 1997 the International Reading Association
(IRA) publicized Position Statement on the Role of Phonics in Reading
Instruction, which then comprehensively supported the teaching of phonic
foundation and skills in reading instruction and practice: “Phonics instruction

15
should not be provided in the form of totally decontextualized drill exercises.
The typical worksheets purporting to provide practice in simple phonics are of
limited value in helping children develop functional phonic skills for
identifying words in books and for spelling the words they need as they
write”. Following the principles, other researchers have recommended that
teaching phonics should be explicit, pervasive, systematic, strategic, and
diagnostic. (Afflerbach et al, 2000; Hoffman & McCarthey, 2000)
A balanced approach between the meaning-emphasis approach and
skills-based approach has been widely studied (Afflerbach et al, 2000;
Searfoss et al, 2001) in which they suggested a combination of the best
features of the two approaches. The balanced approach formulates teaching
skills, concepts, strategies through explicit reading instructions, studentcentered exploration, guided practice activities, and structured reading
materials, and the flexible application of teachers‟ instructions is
recommended when necessary.
2.3. USE OF EXTENSIVE READING IN READING TEACHING
Students‟ reading ability can just improve with their experiences of
reading extended materials during extended time durations (Grabe & Stoller,
2002) when they read independently, read for enjoyment, and develop a higher
level of reading comprehension ability (Day et al, 1998) and develop better
attitudes toward reading (Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Wang & Guthrie, 2004).
In parallel with the diversity of studies on extensive reading, the
implementation of this reading method has been popular in the reading
classrooms for the teachers as researchers wanted to find out the effectiveness
of it to their students (Grabe & Stoller, 2002; McDonough et al, 2013; Wang &
Guthrie, 2004) that have brought a lot of meaningful findings to teaching and
researching as will be discussed in the following session of previous research.

16
2.4. POSSIBLE DIFFICULTIES OF STUDENTS IN EXTENSIVE
READING
When applying the method of extensive reading to students in reading
lessons, the teachers/researchers have found several difficulties that their
students met with. According to Watkins (2018), extensive reading is still
under-utilized in many language learning contexts, which could be
attributable to a variety of causes. These include the fact that extensive
reading is frequently teacher-centered when they try to control and orient
students with what to read, that students may have negative attitudes
regarding reading, and that time limits may exist in various school settings. In
many educational institutions, syllabuses often do not explicitly state that
fluent reading is a goal and will be assessed for final evaluation, so extensive
reading may be overlooked.
According to Day et al (1998), students may find extensive reading
difficult because of the materials with more challenges to their level; so it
should be the teacher‟s job to choose the text in clear and accessible language
for students to easily interact. Students will find it challenging if there are
various new words (Nation & Ming-tzu, 1999) so the reading materials should
provide them with opportunities of encountering high-frequency words by
using graded readers. This method will help students build their confidence
and fluency in their reading practice.
When students' background knowledge is insufficient, it can be difficult
for them to understand the cultural or information assumptions and concepts
in the reading text, especially when the reading materials are internationally
read (Nation & Waring, 2020). Besides, some causes of students‟ difficulties
that were mentioned by Westwood (2002) include learning environment,
working relationship with the teacher, or factors that teachers can control: