Using the brainstorming technique in teaching the reading skill to esp students at college

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI LIEN

USING THE BRAINSTORMING TECHNIQUE IN
TEACHING THE READING SKILL TO ESP STUDENTS AT
COLLEGE

MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

Nghệ An, năm 2013


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI LIEN

USING THE BRAINSTORMING TECHNIQUE IN
TEACHING THE READING SKILL TO ESP STUDENTS AT
COLLEGE

Field: Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching
Code: 601410

MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

Supervisor: Dr. TRAN THI NGOC YEN

Nghệ An- 2013

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my superior, Doctor Tran Thi
Ngoc Yen for her valuable guidance, insightful suggestion, precious orientation and
warm encouragement from shaping the first draft of this manuscript till the
completed thesis.
I am thankful to head of Foreign Language Department at Nghe An TourismTrading Vocational College, Mrs. Le Thi Mai Hong, for letting me to carry out the
experiment with second-year accounting learners while I was gathering the data for
the research.
I would also like to thank the administrators, teachers, and students of
K17A1 and K17A3 at Nghe An Tourism-Trading Vocational College for their
cooperation and help.
Finally, I would like to delicate this work to my parents and family, whose
great support and encouragement have helped me a lot in the production of this
study.

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ABSTRACT
Brainstorming has been considered an effective strategy to improve learners’
reading comprehension level. Research in this area has concentrated on the effect of
brainstorming technique on students’ reading achievement. This thesis work
investigates the degree of the impact of prior knowledge activation through the use
of brainstorming in enhancing learners' reading comprehension. To evaluate this, an
experimental design was conducted. After teaching the eight reading sessions, the
learners are supposed to read these informational texts and to do the multiple-choice

exercises. Their reading comprehension is tested and their achievements are
marked. Three comparisons: the comparison between average total score of eight
sessions for both groups, the comparison between average score of the last session
and the average score of the first session and the comparison between the average of
the second half sessions and the average of the first half sessions in term of means
and standard deviations were made to appreciate the participants’ reading
comprehension improvement and it was found that the experimental group
outperformed the control one. Besides, the analysis of the participants’ patterns of
progress demonstrates that the participants of the experimental group made
gradually increases during the treatment.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT........................................................................................................... ii
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................... 4
3.5. Pilot testing.................................................................................................. 38

LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS
ESP:

English for specific purpose

ETC:

Et cetera

L:

Lesson

P:

Participant

%:

percent

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LIST OF TABLES

ABSTRACT........................................................................................................... ii
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................... 4
3.5. Pilot testing.................................................................................................. 38

LIST OF FIGURES

ABSTRACT........................................................................................................... ii
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................... 4

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3.5. Pilot testing.................................................................................................. 38

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Rationale
It is undeniable that English plays a crucial role in all fields of our life, and
it is considered as a tool to help us discover what has been happening around the
world. It is probably the reason why English is a compulsory subject in school,
college and university education.
Like many other compulsory subjects learned in many institutions in
Vietnam, English for specific purpose (ESP) has more recently received a great
attention. What is behind ESP is that teachers hope to compile teaching materials
that will be suitable for students’ level in the specific subject area. English for
accounting, for example, aims at improving students’ reading comprehension and
analysing ability to apply in the real contexts of economy field.
Understanding the importance of English, most students at Nghe An
Tourism- Trading Vocational College have tried their best to gain the first objective
to become accountants with good knowledge of English in economy field. They
consider that among four language skill, listening, speaking, reading and writing,
reading is an important one because it does not only help student develop other
language skills, but also provides them knowledge of other fields. Supporting the
importance of reading both in study and real life, West (1941) said that, reading is
one of the most important skills in study and daily life. Because reading ability is
powerful, various researchers have attempted to investigate ways to improve
students’ reading ability in reading programs (cited in Tran, 2011, p.1). As we read,
we can enrich our knowledge through reading material and from that we can apply
in other fields.
However, while teaching reading following the ESP syllabus for the second

year accounting students at Nghe An Tourism-Trading Vocational College, the
researcher realized that both the teachers and the students still have difficulties in
finding effective way to teach and learn reading lessons. For these reasons, the

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study was carried out to answer the question of how to use “brain storming” in
teaching reading skill with the hope that students can have good prior knowledge
relating to the text before reading so that they can comprehend more.
1.2. Aims of the study
The thesis seeks to answer the following research questions:
- Will brainstorming help to increase ESP learners’ reading comprehension? And if
it does,
- To what extend does brainstorming increase ESP learners’ reading
comprehension?
1. 3. Scope of the study
There are many strategies to improve reading skill for ESP students, and
brainstorming is one of the most important strategies. This study was set to
investigate the effects of brainstorming on helping students to develop their reading
comprehension.
1.4. Methods of the study
The main methodology used in the study was experimental. Groups of
second year ESP students in Nghe An tourism trading vocational College involved
in experimental process. The study was to see how brainstorming affects the ESP
students’ reading comprehension.
1.5. Design of the thesis
The thesis consists the following parts:
Chapter 1: Introduction
This part introduces the rationale, aims, scope, method and organization of the

thesis.
Chapter 2: Literature Review

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This chapter provides background knowledge relevance to the topic such as the
definition of reading and reading comprehension, reading process models,
classification of reading, factors affecting reading skill, three active stages of
reading lesson, brainstorming and its roles in improving reading skill.
Chapter 3: The study
This part presents the study and these include, research questions, participants,
material, procedures and results.
Chapter 4: Conclusion
In this part the main points and contents of the study will be summarized

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CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides the background knowledge on the topics that relate to
the research. Previous studies on reading process, reading process models,
comprehension, reading comprehension, classification of reading, factors affecting
learning the reading skill, the three stages of a reading lesson, brainstorming in
reading comprehension, brainstorming rules, and the roles of brainstorming in
reading comprehension, will be discussed.
2.1. Reading

Reading has a multifaceted impact on our life. People have demand for
reading to expand their knowledge. Through reading different books and materials,
people can discover what happen around the world. Today, when people have to
update new mass information all over the world, reading becomes more and more
important. There have been different definitions of reading and reading
comprehension. Each linguistic has given his own definition of reading and reading
comprehension presented below.
Reading is regarded as the most important of the four language skills for both
foreign and second language learners. Carell, Davine and Eskey (1988, p.1) stated
that “without solid reading proficiency, second language learners cannot perform at
levels they must in order to succeed”. Sharing the same ideas, Anderson (1999, p.3)
also emphasized that the more exposure a student has to language through reading,
the greater the possibilities that overall language proficiency will increase. Etc.
Although we read various types of material such as book, newspaper,
magazine, the act of reading is not completely understood nor easily described.
There have been numerous definitions of reading, each of which is the reflection of
the author’s view of the reading process. According to Anderson (1999, p.1)
“Reading is an active, fluent process which involves the reader and 342 the reading
material in building meaning. Meaning does not reside on the printed page or

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occurs in reading, which combines the words on the printed page with the reader’s
background knowledge and experiences”. Rumelhart (1977) argues that reading
involves the reader, the text and the interaction between the reader and text.
Aebersold and Field (1997, p.15) also show that "reading is what happens when
people look at a text and assign meaning to the written symbols in that text. The text
and the reader are the two physical entities necessary for the reading process to
start. It is, however, the interaction between the text and the reader that constitutes

the actual meaning”. Sharing the same point of view on reading, William (1984,
p.3) argued that “written texts, then, often contain more than we need to understand
them. The efficient reader makes use of this to take what he needs, and no more, to
obtain meaning”. One more definition of reading is offered by Smith (1985, p.102)
who defined reading as “understanding the author’s thought”. It means that the
readers read the author’s mind not the author’s words.
Most linguists think that understanding is not only trying to get what the
writer implied but also interacting with the author.
2.2. Reading process models
There have been numerous points of views on reading process. In general,
they have focused on three different reading models named the bottom up, the top
down and the interactive. These three models will be discussed in turn.
2.2.1. The bottom-up model
According to Nunan (1991), in bottom-up model, the reader begins with the
written text, and construct meaning from letters, words, phrases, and sentences
found and then processes the text in a liner way. In the process of meaning
interpretation, the language is translated from one form of symbolic representation
to another. The are text driven models so the reader to letters to letters, words to
words, phrases to phrases, and sentences to sentences to identify their exact
meaning in which shortcomings of theses models are stated. This view is shared by

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Goodman who believes that “in bottom up processing, reader must first recognize a
multiplicity of linguistic signal (letter, morphemes, syllables, words, phrases,
grammatical cues, discourse markers) and use their linguistic data processing
mechanisms to impose some sort of order on these signals”(Goodman, 1970 as
cited in Brown, 2001, p.299).
In the bottom-up process, the reader has to build comprehension from letters

to sentences level to links their exact meaning. It means that the basic for bottom up
processing is the linguistic knowledge of the reader. Therefore, this model has some
limitation as pointed out by Samuel and Kamil (1988, p.31):
"the lack of feedback, in that no mechanism is provided to allow for
processing stages which occur later in the system to influence processing
which occurs earlier in the system. Because of the lack of feedback loops in
the early bottom up models, it was difficult to account for sentence context
effects and the role of prior knowledge of text topic as facilitating variables
in word recognition and comprehension”.
2.2.2. The top-down model
In the top down processing, the reader gives his or her own intelligence and
experience to understand the writer’s meaning in the text. As shared by Christine
Nuttall (1996, p.16), “we draw our intelligence and experience - the prediction we
can make, based on the schemata we have acquired- to understand the text...this
kind of processing is used when we interpret assumptions and draw inferences”. He
also compared this process like taking an eagle’s eye view of landscape below. It
means that to access the text, the reader has to have his or her own back ground
knowledge to understand the whole text. Goodman (1970, p.135) also described
reading as a “guessing game", in which the "reader reconstructs, as best as he can,
a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display". This idea
shows the important role of the reader’s background knowledge to the text. More
background knowledge the reader has, the more he understands the text. However,

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there are certain limitations in this model. Eskey (1998, p.93) argues that these
models
"tend to emphasize such higher-level skills as the prediction of meaning by
means of context clues or certain kinds of background knowledge at the

expense of such lower skills as the rapid and accurate identification of
lexical and grammatical form. That is, in making the perfectly valid point
that fluent reading is primarily a cognitive process, they tend to deemphasize
the perceptual and decoding dimensions of that process".
Samuel and Kamil (1988, pp.22-34) also shared the same view. According to
them, one of the problems for the top-down model is that for many texts, the reader
has little knowledge of the topic and cannot generate predictions. A more serious
problem is that even if a skilled reader could generate predictions, the amount of
time necessary to generate a prediction may be greater than the amount of time the
skilled reader needs simply to recognize the words.
Due to the above limitation of both bottom down and top down models,
some recent researches on teaching reading has shown that when teach reading
skill, the teacher should combine between bottom down and top down model. This
combination of bottom up model and top down model is also called interactive
reading. This model will be discussed as follow
2.2.3. The interactive model
The interactive model is combination of bottom-up and top-down processing
in the construction of the meaning of a text. There have been numerous studies
about this model. According to Widdownson (1978) reading as the process of
combining textual information with the information the reader brings to a text. In
this view, the reading process is not simply a matter of extracting information from
the text. Rather, it is one in which the reading activates a range of knowledge in the
reader's mind that he/she uses, and that, in turn, may be refined and extended by the
new information supplied by the text. Hayes (1991) is convinced that in active

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model, different processes are responsible for providing information that is shared
with other processes. The information obtained from each type of processing is

combined to determine the most appropriate interpretation of the printed page.
Therefore, interactive model is regarded as the best model of all, because it
combines bottom up and top down models. With the skilful combination of the two
models the reader can be successful in comprehending the text. Stanovich (1980,
p.32) concluded:
"Interactive models of reading appear to provide a more accurate
conceptualization of reading performance than strictly top-down or bottom-up
models. When combined with an assumption of compensatory processing (that
a deficit in any particular process will result in a greater reliance on their
knowledge sources, regardless of their level in the processing hierarchy),
interactive models provide a better account of the existing data on the use of
orthographic structure and sentence context by good and poor readers"
2.3. Reading comprehension
For the text we read, it is important to understand the massage that the author
wants to convey. Therefore, reading comprehension plays an important role in
teaching and learning a language reading skill. The following definitions of
comprehension and reading comprehension will be discussed.
According to Smith (2004, p.379) comprehension “as a process by which
someone links what he knows about the world to what he already has as
information, (intentions) and (expectations) in his head Thus, comprehending is the
state of being out of confusion and puzzling to get things clear with no
misunderstanding”. In addition, Anderson (1995, pp.379-380) stated that
comprehension can be analyzed in three stages. The first stage is concerned with
perception. At this stage, the message being either talk or print is encoded. The
second stage is called the parsing stage. At this point, what was encoded is turned
into a mental map for all gained meanings. The final stage is termed the utilization
stage. In this stage, what was acquired as new knowledge from sentences' meanings

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is used in understanding other things. Comprehension is to take in information, and
then try to work it.
According to Grellet (1981, p.3) “reading comprehension or understanding
a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as
possible”. This point of view concentrates on the reader’s understanding of the
message based on the individual’s background knowledge. Similarly, Swam (1975,
p.1) stated that when we say “a student is good at comprehension we mean that he
can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information a text
with the minimum of understanding”. Supporting these ideas, Wray (2004, p.14)
also considers reading comprehension as an interaction between what the text
provides and what the reader brings to it when he states:
“Understating in reading is exactly like this. It is not simply a question of
getting meaning from what is on the page. When you read, you supply a
good deal of the meaning to the page. The process is an interactive one, with
resultant learning being a combination of your previous ideas with new ones
encountered in this text”.
According to the authors, reading is much more than just pronouncing words
correctly or simply knowing what the author intends and it is also the primary
purpose for reading. Therefore, raising students' awareness of main ideas in a text
and exploring the organization of a text are essential for good comprehension.
2.4. Main concepts in reading
There are many concepts in reading. However, in this study, we focus on the
following concepts: oral reading versus silent reading, skimming versus scanning
and intensive versus extensive reading. They will be discussed in turn.
2.4.1. Oral reading versus silent reading
Oral reading is popular in classrooms for the beginner in classroom. It
“involves looking at a text, understanding it and also saying it”, (Doff, 1995, p.67).
This means when the reader reads aloud he or she not only understands the content

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of the text but also helps others to listen and know the information of the text. Doff
asserts that “reading aloud can be useful at the earliest stage of reading
(recognising letters and words); it can help students to make the connection
between sound and spelling”.
In fact, oral reading proves itself to be advantageous for the learners because
it helps them make the connection between sounds and spelling of letters and
words, and assists the teachers to check learner’s pronunciation. However, this kind
of reading is not useful out side classroom. Doff (1995, p58) stated: "for reading a
text, it is not a very useful technique". This is because it is not a natural activity –
most people do not read aloud in real life.
Accordingly, oral reading should be applied only for the beginner and
limited in upper classes because it can help the beginner to improve their
pronunciation than understand the content of the text. In fact the upper classes
acquire more: learners need to read and understand the meaning of the text at the
same time.
Unlike oral reading, silent reading is normally applied both in classroom and
in the real life. According to Abbott and Wingard (1985, p.81) “Normally, reading
is a silent and individual activity since the writer's expectation was that the text
would be read, not heard”. Supporting this view, Doff (1995, p.67) believes that “it
involves looking at sentences and understanding the message they convey, in other
words, "making sense" of a written text”. This means that in the reading process,
the reader has to know how to combine skilfully between his or her knowledge of
the word and the information of the text to relate the knowledge in the real life.
2.4.2. Skimming versus scanning
Skimming is one of specific reading techniques necessary for quick and
efficient reading. According to Nuttall (1989, p.34) “By skimming... we mean
glancing rapidly through a text to determine its gist, for example in order to decide

whether a research paper is relevant to our own work..., or in order to keep

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ourselves superficially informed about matters that are not of great importance to
us”. Grellet (1981, p.19) also stated “when skimming, we go through the reading
material quickly in order to gets its main points or the intention of the writer, but
not to find the answer to specific questions,… when scanning, we only try to locate
specific information and often we do not even follow the linearity of the passage to
do so”.
According to these views, by skimming the text, the reader can get the main
ideas of the text by go through the text very fast without paying attention to the
detail. Therefore, skimming is a useful technique to help the learner organize his
thoughts and specify what information he can get from a book.
Like skimming, scanning is also a helpful technique used popularly in
reading lessons. This technique helps the reader to read the text very quickly to find
the main information from the text. Nuttall (1989, p. 34) states that “by scanning
we mean glancing rapidly through a text either to search for a specific piece of
information... or to get an initial impression of whether the text is suitable for a
given purpose...”
In addition, Grellet (1981, p.19) gives a more detailed definition of scanning:
“when scanning, we only try to locate information and often we do not even follow
the linearity of passage to do so, and scanning is far more limited since it only
means retrieving what information is relevant to our purpose”. This means by
scanning, the readers usually focus on searching the information what they want by
moving their eyes quickly along the lines. This is reason why scanning is widely
used in everyday life.
2.4.3. Intensive versus extensive reading
The aim of intensive reading is to arrive at a profound and detailed

understanding of the text not only of what it means but also of how the meaning is
produced. According to Nuttall (1989, p. 23), intensive reading

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“involves approaching the text under the close guidance of the teacher..., or
under the guidance of a task which forces the student to pay great attention to
the text. The aim of intensive reading is to arrive at a profound and detailed
understanding of the text: not only of what it means, but also of how the
meaning is produced. The "how" is as important as the "what", for the intensive
reading lesson is intended primarily to train students in reading strategies”.
This view is supported by Grellet (1981, p.4) who states that “intensive
reading means reading short text to extract specific information. This is an accuracy
activity involving reading for details”. This means that in intensive reading, the reader
read the text carefully to find out the specific information. Therefore, it is
considered as a useful technique applied popularly in classroom.
In contrast with intensive reading, extensive reading is one of good ways to
improve reader’s knowledge of a foreign language because its aim is to cover the
content of text in the shortest possible period of time and it is also called reading for
fluency. The student reads long texts to have general understanding, to practise his
fluency in reading, or to relax. Grellet (1981, p.4) confirms “extensive reading
means reading longer text, usually or one’s own pleasure. This is a fluency activity
mainly involving general understanding”. Extensive reading is order to gain a
general understanding of what is read. Therefore, it can help to develop reader’s
good reading habits, to build up knowledge of vocabulary and structure, and to
encourage a liking for reading.
Accordingly, in the language classroom, the teacher must introduce some
suitable reading materials to students, as it is useful for them to form a good habit of
reading.

2.5. Factors affecting the learning of reading skill
There are many different factors affecting the learning reading skill.
However, in this thesis, these factors are grouped into text factors and reader
factors.

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2.5.1. Text factors
The reading text is one of the main factors which influence reading
comprehension. The text is defined by Davies (1995, p.194) as "a coherent piece of
writing exhibiting both structure and texture, assignable to a single author or
collaborating authors, with clearly defined boundaries making the beginning and
end of the writing". Accordingly, in the text, the author has to try to make the text
with clear beginning and clear end. This print is delivered under conditions of
coherence and cohesion. The text can be a paragraph, or a set of paragraphs as it can
be in prose or verse. It may have different types according to the content it
expresses. In addition, vocabulary, sentence structure and syntax are important
elements to look at while analyzing text's influence on reading comprehension.
These elements contribute to help the reader analyzing and achieve the author’s
message.
2.5.1.1. Vocabulary
Vocabulary plays a crucial role in the text and it is an aspect which has a
great influence on reading comprehension. When the reader has known mast of
words in to the text, he or she will read and comprehend the author’s message
better. In fact, it is invisible that most foreign readers have to face with difficult
vocabulary items and sometimes they just have to ignore them. The lack of
vocabulary leads them to misunderstand the message of the text. Readers usually
check up definitions in dictionaries or ignore new words which appear in the text.
However, these strategies sometime do not work. In other words, mastery of

vocabulary is an essential factor that affects reading comprehension. If readers
possess an expansive vocabulary, they are more likely to understand textual writing,
and will be less likely to become confused or frustrated. Sharing with this opinion,
Coady and Huckin (1975, p.20) commented that “for them, comprehension is
reached once a passage's lexis is covered. This is a general rule for any text's
language being a foreign, a second and even a native one. So, vocabulary

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knowledge is recommended for the understating of a given text either being in a
native language or a target one”.
In cases when the reader aims at gaining a general comprehension of the text,
he may skip words and try to predict their meanings from the surrounding context.
In some other cases, when the reader studies the text intensively with a need for
thorough comprehension, he needs to have an acceptable percentage of known
words and very little amount of unfamiliar ones. In general, lexical knowledge is
critical while comprehending. The amount of this knowledge determine by the level
of comprehension.
2.5.1.2. Text types
There is evidence that knowledge of the text type facilitates reading
comprehension. Each type has its own characteristics concerning the general theme
and the way it is structured. In addition, each text type presents its own characters
about forming sentence structure as well as vocabulary item. According to Davies
(1995, pp. 83-85) a text is described according to its rhetorical function. A text can
be persuasive, descriptive, expository, etc...These functions reflect neither the text's
level of difficulty nor its content, but simply, they are indicators of the author's
social goals. He referred also to more specific lower-level rhetorical functions such
as cause-effect, comparison-contrast argument-exemplification, problem-solution
patterns and general particular patterns of the text. Accordingly, each type of

writing shows a particular field and draws the author’s especial intention. It is
necessary for the reader to understand and category the type of text to make sure
that he will be successful in following the author's flow of ideas.
In general, there are two types of text namely narrative and expository text.
In each type, it has its own characteristics to distinguish. When reading narrative
texts, for example, the reader needs to be aware that this type usually tells about a
tale, either a short story, folktale, myth, fable, legend, fantasy or science fiction as it
reports biographies. It consists of three parts: an opening section, a central of story

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and the ending. It has an opening section, the heart of the events and a closing
section. The narrative text centers on some elements which are the characters,
settings, themes, the conflict, sequence of events which settle the plot and a
resolution of the conflict. These characteristics are named by Rumelhart (1980,
p.313) as ''story grammars''. He emphasizes that these story grammars are helpful
and very useful in understanding considerable portions of the story to be read.
According to Hyland (1990, p.14) "effective understanding is therefore seen as
being dependent on the reader's ability to relate the structure of a text to a familiar
conventional pattern". Therefore, the reader should get inside the text with the
previous knowledge of meeting characters, following a sequence of events with
conflicts and solutions. This will help the reader to understand the content that the
author wants to convey in the text better.
Besides, the reader also focuses on what the expository tell. This type of text
is usually related to two fields namely science and history texts. In this text, the
reader has to face with many different specific vocabularies in some cases domain
specific or technical items. Therefore, it can be considered as a difficult text, so to
read and understand the text effectively, the reader should be prepared for the
expository text features, information statistics, numbers, graphs, technical

vocabulary with the different types of development namely description,
classification, contrast, cause and effect and so on.
In short, the text type has an impact on reaching comprehension for the
reader. The reader’s reading comprehension skill will be more successful when he
distinguishes text types and know the different rhetorical goals and organizational
patterns.
2.5.1.3. Coherence and Cohesion
Coherence means the connection of ideas at the idea level, and cohesion
means the connection of ideas at the sentence level. A text with coherent and
cohesive device seems easier to understand than a text which lacks these two

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aspects. Therefore, both coherence and cohesion have influence on reading
comprehension.
In term of cohesive device, Trimmer (1995, p. 69) stated that a coherent
paragraph as a set of connected sentences helps the reader to move from one idea to
another easily with no separations. If the text at the reader's hand lacks coherence,
the reader will not be able to follow the writer's train of thoughts. He may read the
text several times in an attempt to establish connections. This is likely to turn
reading into a difficult boring task. Accordingly, coherence plays a crucial role in
reading comprehension, and it is an effective device that helps the reader to connect
at the idea level in the text better.
Likewise, cohesion also plays an important role in reading texts. Davies
(1995, p. 101) stated that cohesion is crucial for establishing coherence. That is to
say, a text which lacks cohesion will not be coherent. Furthermore, cohesion
facilitates reading. Yun (1993, p.13) asserts that "it provides the basis for making
predictions and building expectations. The continuity expressed by cohesion
constitutes the context that provides the basis for making predictions and building

expectations in reading".
In short, cohesion helps the reader to put alternatives for the meaning
intended by the writer. It also encourages the reader to predict the difficult words in
a sentence and help him to avoid looking up these words on dictionary.
2.5.1.4. Syntax
Problems of comprehension may arise from sentences' syntax. Sentences
vary in their structures. They are simple, complex, compound or complex
compound. Text subordination and coordination may cause problems of
comprehension. In addition, very long phrases are likely to create difficulties. In
other words, a very long stretch of words with no verb or action may be a source of
confusion. Moreover, types of words may also cause syntactic problems.
Complication of a sentence may be attributed to the presence of complex,

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compound or nominal words in it. Sentence length is another factor which may
settle difficulties in understanding. Erickson (2003, p.6) argues that the reader who
is not accustomed to the different sentence structures, will certainly face problems
in comprehending texts.
2.5.2. Reader factors
The factors related to the reader also influence his level of reading
comprehension. These factors include the reader's purpose for reading, his interest
in the text, his language proficiency, culture and his familiarity or unfamiliarity with
the text's topic.
2.5.2.1. Reading purposes
The reader’s reading purpose is a crucial factor that influences the reading
comprehension process. A website has shown the important role of the reader’s
purposes as follow:
“We also know from reading research that it's very important for students to

have purposes, very specific purposes when they read. We know that when
you're reading without a purpose, and almost all of us have experienced
some time in our life where we lost our purpose for reading and then we
realized we didn't remember much of what we read” (Curriculum Strategies
for Reading, n.d.)
In other words, the reader should have a purpose in his mind while reading.
Reading will be a pointless activity if he gets inside a text aimless. Wallace (1980,
p.9) argues that it is necessary to have a purpose. Someone who starts reading with no
pre-established purpose or simply starts with a kind of confusion is likely to end up
by being bored of the reading act. In addition, his results in terms of comprehension
are to be low or he will fail to understand at all. That is what will happen if the reader
reads with no objectives. Whether he intends to find answers to questions, aims at
getting information, or simply searches joy, he cannot engage in the text without

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having a precise purpose. It is one way to save the reader's time and energy.
Moreover, it ensures his involvement and enthusiasm while reading. Supporting
Wallace’s point of view, Donoghue (2009, p.1) states that the purpose of reading can
focus the readers’ attention and it can help them in understanding the text. He also
points out that “comprehension in reading is stronger when the purpose is
specific”. It means that the purpose of reading determine how will the readers
comprehend a text. When the readers set a purpose for reading the text, they will
draw their attention to the text and they will try to comprehend the text. It is obvious
that the purpose of reading must be set before reading. Therefore the instructors
should be able to help the readers in constructing their purpose before reading.
In short, the reader should identify the reasons for reading. By setting the
different purposes of reading and his intention while reading, the reader will
achieve a good level in comprehending the message of the text. Thus, reading

purpose has a special influence on getting information as well as remembering the
information from the text.
2.5.2.2. The reader’s interest in reading
A reader who is highly interested to read a passage is likely to comprehend
it. According to Donoghue (2009, p.176) when the readers are curious about a
subject, they will have a higher interest in reading the text to seek information and
discover answers to satisfy that curiosity. Besides, a text which draws the reader's
attention through its aesthetic aspects, choice of vocabulary and theme is likely to
encourage the reader to sink in it. The reader's desire to stick to the text gets higher
and higher until he ends up with it. In most cases, he rereads once and twice
widening, each time, the scope of his comprehension reading interest will affect the
readers’ comprehension in reading the text. Thus, the reader's preferences and
motivation are of a crucial importance in reading comprehension. Supporting these
ideas, Widdowson (1978, p.80) argues that the readers usually attend to what is
related to their likes and interest and that they do not worry about texts which do not

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