DOWNLOAD LUẬN VĂN A STUDY ON SOME POSSIBLE EFFECTIVE PRE-READING ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE READING SKILLS FOR THE 2ND -YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT THE MILITARY SCIENCE ACADEMY

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PART A: INTRODUCTION
I. Rationale
In many second or foreign language teaching situations, reading receives a special
focus. There are a number of reasons for this. First, many foreign language students often
have reading as one of their most important goals. They want to be able to read for
information and pleasure, for their career, and for study purposes. In fact, in most EFL
situations, the ability to read in a foreign language is all that students ever want to acquire.
Second, written texts serve various pedagogical purposes. Extensive exposure to
linguistically comprehensible written texts can enhance the process of language
acquisition. Good reading texts also provide good models for writing and provide
opportunities to introduce new topics, to stimulate discussion and to study language.
Reading, then, is a skill which is highly valued by students and teachers alike.
In process of teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam in
general, and at the Military Science Academy (MSA) in particular, reading has always
been offered a great deal of attention both from the teachers and the students.
Like many others universities in Vietnam, English at the MSA is learnt and taught
in non-native environment, therefore, reading is not only considered as a means to gain
knowledge but also a means by which further study takes place. In other words, learners
“read to learn” (Burns, 1988:11).
According to Carrel (1981:1), “for many students, reading is by far the most
important of the four skills in a second language, particularly in English as a second or
foreign language”. This is especially true to the students at the MSA, where learners are
mostly future interpreters, translators, or teachers of English in others Military Colleges
whose desires are to be able to handle subjects related to written materials in English and
to work with their English-speaking colleagues and partners. It is essential for them to
acquire the ability to read English effectively and efficiently. However, despite the
teachers’ and students’ effort, students still often claim to have a lot of difficulties in
reading English textbooks or English materials, and therefore, they sometimes read them
inefficiently.
For the second-year students of English, although they have been learning English

for at least several years, it is still often difficult for them to understand a text or a passage
in English, since they still lack vocabulary, grammar, reading skills and poor background

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knowledge. Besides, the teachers sometimes have to face with difficulties in dealing with
the students’ learning demand and newly introduced sources of materials. In addition,
teaching methods and teaching techniques in general, are still below the international
standard of education. To find out the areas of students’ difficulty at the MSA and the
causes of their unsuccessful reading comprehension is necessary. Therefore, these reasons
have inspired the writing of A Study on some possible effective pre-reading activities to
improve reading skills for the 2nd -year English Majors at the Military Science Academy.
It is hoped that the study will make some contributions to improve the learning of English
in general, and the learning of reading in particular among the 2 nd-year English majors at
the MSA. The author also hopes that it will be possible to make suggestions for the
teachers to improve the situation of teaching and learning reading at the MSA.
II. Aims of the study
The main purposes of the study are to investigate pre-reading techniques employed
by the teachers of English at the MSA, and to give a suggestion of some possible prereading activities that can be applied to teach the text book More Reading Power to the
second-year students of English at the MSA.
To achieve these purposes, the study will focus on the following aims:
* To understand better and more fully the notions of reading and reading
comprehension, etc.
* To investigate the teachers’ and students’ attitude towards the pre- reading techniques.
* To examine the students’ preference for pre-reading techniques.
* To suggest some possible pre-reading activities which are thought to be effective
for teaching reading to the 2nd-year students at the MSA.
III. Scope of the study

To improve reading skill for students of English at the MSA, the teachers can make
use of various techniques and number of things should be done. However, in this study, the
author only intends to overview a brief of current situation of teaching and learning reading
of the 2nd-year students of English at the MSA, and to suggest some possible activities that
can be applied in the Pre-reading stage in order to motivate students in reading lesson as
well as help them to become good and effective readers.
IV. Methods of the study
The study was carried out on the basis of qualitative research method including
questionnaires and class observation.

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Questionnaires are designed as a mean to make the researcher’s evaluation more
objective. The questionnaires are given to the second-year students and the teachers of
English at the MSA with the hope to find out their attitudes towards pre-reading techniques
and their comments and suggestions for these activities. Data were collected through the
survey questionnaires and class observation.
Analyzing statistics from the survey questionnaire on reading activities conducted with
the cooperation of the both teachers and students at the MSA. All comments, remarks,
recommendation assumptions, and conclusion provided in the study based on the data analysis.
Besides, more information needed for the study is gathered through other methods
such as class observations, informal interviews, and discussions with the teachers and
students at the MSA.
V. Significance of the study
The study highlights the importance of motivation to the reading skills in general
and to the pre-reading stage in particular. Moreover, the findings of the study are thought
to be useful for teachers of English to be aware of the essential role of the pre-reading
activities to the students’ motivation in reading lessons.

VI. Design of the study
The study is composed of three parts: Part A-Introduction provides rationale, the
aims, scope, methods, and design of the study. Part B-Development consists of three
chapters: Chapter 1-Literature review, conceptualizes the study’s theoretical background,
presents the concepts relevant to the topic of the thesis: reading and reading
comprehension, classification of reading, role of reading in foreign language learning,
motivation and factors in teaching and learning reading. Chapter one will be closed with
the importance of the Pre-reading activities in a reading lesson. Chapter 2-The study,
presents the methodology used in the study. It also shows the detailed results of the survey
and covers a comprehensive analysis on the data collected form questionnaires and class
observations. Chapter 3-offers some major findings and suggestions of some possible Prereading activities which are thought to be helpful for teaching reading to the 2 nd-year
students of English at the MSA. Part C- Conclusion is a review of the study, future
directions for further research and limitations of the study as well.

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1
LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Introduction
In this chapter, the author mainly concerns with reviewing the notions of reading
and reading comprehension. The review includes the definitions of each notion and
followed by the classification of reading, the importance of reading in foreign language
learning, theory of motivation and factors in teaching and learning reading. Last but not
least, the importance of the Pre-reading activities are also presented in this chapter as the
main purpose of the research
1.2. Theoretical background of reading
1.2.1. Definitions of reading and reading comprehension

1.2.1.1. Definition of reading
Reading is often referred to as the most important of the four language skills for
EFL learners, as it enables students to gain exposure to the target language and receive
valuable linguistic input to build up language proficiency (Erten & Razı, 2003). We can
not be sure when reading activity begins, but we have to admit that reading is essential
activity that provides a great contribution in obtaining knowledge. It is obvious that in real
life we usually spend much time reading all sorts of things like books, magazines,
newspapers, novels, stories. However, sometimes we read but we do not understand what
they mean, or can not understand the text we read. In this case, it can not be called reading.
So what is reading?
There have been numerous definitions of reading each of them is the reflection of
its author’s view of the reading process. Anderson (1999: 1) explains this very neatly as
follows: “Reading is an active, fluent process which involves the reader and the reading
material in building meaning. Meaning does not reside on the printed page or occurs in
reading, which combines the words on the printed page with the reader’s background
knowledge and experiences.”
According to Harmer (1989: 153), reading is a mechanical process that “eyes
receive the message and the brain then has to work out the significance of the message”. In
his definition, Harmer focuses on both two actions dominated by the eyes and the brain as
well as on the speed of the process “a reading text moves at a speed of the reader”, which
means that the readers themselves decides how fast he wants to read the text.

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Sharing the same opinion, Smith (1985:102) defines “reading understands the
author’s thought”. He also added that “understanding print or even receiving
communication can hardly be said to explain reading”. The problem still remains how the
reader understands the print or the message. “It means that we-the reader-read the author’s

mind not the author’s words”. Roe, Stood and Burns (1987:2) describes reading in a more
extensive way. In their opinion, “reading is understanding written language”, “reading is a
complex mental process”, “reading is thinking”, or “reading comprehension is
reconstruction, interpretation and evaluation of what author of written content means by
using knowledge gained from life experience.”
Another definition of reading was offered by Allen and Valletta (1977: 249). In
their opinion, “reading is a developmental process”. We learn reading not only to know
how to read, to master the symbols, the sound, the language, the grammar etc, that used in
the text but also to understand the ideas, the information expressed in that text or to
develop the ability of reconstructing its content using our own words. One more researcher
called Goodman (1971: 153) considers reading is “a psycholinguistic process by which the
reader- a language user, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded
by a writer as a graphic display.”
Reading involves a reader, a text, and a writer. Reading skills are developed in an
active process. This process involves the surface representation encoded by a writer and
ends with interpretation of the written text and interchanges between the writer and the
reader (Goodman 1969 in Carrell 1988). If the writer is careless, the reader may not get the
message. If the writer makes demands that the reader cannot fulfill, the message will not be
received, even though to another reader it might be clear. If the reader is careless, reading
will result in incomplete interpretation. The reader tries to interpret the text through his/her
own experiences, but they may differ from the writer’s experiences. This explanation
proves that reading is not just an active process, but also an interactive one. Reading is
closely linked with meaning. For this reason, lack of shared assumptions presents the most
difficult problem in reading.
To sum up, from all these opinions above, it is obvious that no definition can
possibly capture all the ideas and features of what reading is. Each linguist’s definition
reflects what reading means as seen from his own point of view. However, they all have
some features in common, they share the same ideas that reading means we-the readers

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read the author’s mind not author’s word, and that reading means comprehending written
language and it employs a variety of skills. In addition, they all concentrate on the nature
of reading.
1.2.1.2. Definition of reading comprehension
In teaching and learning a foreign language in general and teaching reading in
particular, reading comprehension plays an important part, it can be understood as the
ability to draw attention to the required information from the text as efficiently as possible.
So what is reading comprehension?
According to Richard and Thomas (1987: 9), “Reading comprehension is best
described as an understanding between the author and the reader”. This point of view
concentrates on the reader’s understanding of the message based on the individual’s
background knowledge. They stated that “reading is much more than just pronouncing
words correctly or simply knowing what the author intends: it is the process whereby the
printed pages stimulate ideas, experiences and responses that are unique to an individual.”
In his book, Swan (1975: 1) pointed out that “A student is good at comprehension
we mean that he can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information
of a text with the minimum of understanding”. For Roe, Stood and Burns (1987: 9):
Reading comprehension is reconstruction, interpretation, and evaluation of what author of
written content means by using knowledge gained from life experience.
Study the nature of reading comprehension, Grilled (1981: 3) indicated that
“Reading comprehension or understanding written text means extracting the required
information from it as effectively as possible”. This means that the student can show his
understanding by re-expressing the content of the text in many ways such as summarizing
the text, answering questions etc.
From these theories above, it can be understood that reading for comprehension is
the primary purpose for reading; raising students' awareness of main ideas in a text and
exploring the organization of a text are essential for good comprehension. It is the process

in which the readers - as they read, can recognize the graphic form and understand the
relation between the writing and the meaning. It means that after reading, students can
master grammar structures, words, pronunciation etc and can understand the content of the
text and use it in their real life as effective as possible. Furthermore, “reading without
comprehension is the meaningless” (Karolin and Karin, 1988: 2). Reading means

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comprehending written language so when understanding break down, reading actually does
not occur.
1.2.2. Classification of reading
1.2.2.1. According to manner
According to Doff (1988), reading is divided into two main types: reading aloud
and silent reading.
* Reading aloud involves “looking at the text, understanding it and also saying it”
(Doff: 70) and he considers reading aloud as a way to convey necessary information to
someone else. Very few people are required to read aloud as a matter of daily routine. The
readers are asked to read the text so loudly that other people can hear it. Reading aloud
does not happen outside the classroom as Doff (1988: 67) said, “reading aloud is not an
activity we engage in very often outside the classroom”.
Reading aloud has both advantages and disadvantages. Natal (1966) sees reading
aloud as an important aid for beginners to improve their pronunciation. It helps students to
make the connection between sounds and spelling of letters and words and also assists the
teacher to check students’ pronunciation. Moreover, it is a technique for him to keep the
class under control, since when one student reads aloud, the others are asked to listen in
case they may be required to continue the reading.
However, Greenwood (1985) criticizes this idea; he claims that students may unable
to focus adequately on the text’s meaning when they highly concentrate on pronouncing

the words. His point of view implied that there are also some negative effects that should
be taken into account in the process of teaching and learning that involves reading aloud.
First of all, when reading aloud, students only focus on the pronunciation not on the
meaning of the text. The second thing is that when students take turn to read a text aloud,
only one student is active; the others will do something else, since they do not have to read.
In addition, this way of reading usually waste much time because students read in turn so
they have to wait one after one. It can be inferred that there is little value in reading aloud
if we want to improve the readers’ reading skills. Therefore, the teachers as educators
should identify the level of their students and decide whether to apply reading aloud or not
in teaching reading to their students.
* Silent reading is “the method we normally use with our native language and on
the whole quickest and most efficient” Lewis (1985: 110). Sharing the same idea, Doff

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(1988: 67) defined silent reading as followed: “silent reading involves looking at sentence
and understanding the message it conveys, in other words making sense of a written text. It
does not normally involve saying the words we read nor even silently in our heads”.
Therefore, we can see that silent reading is an effective skill for reading comprehension
since students do not need to read all the words of a text, they can read at their own speed
and in case they do not understand a sentence they can go back to read again. When
reading silently, students not only obtain its main ideas in the shortest length of time but
also deeply understand its details and can answer the questions as well.
To summarize, silent reading is one effective skill for reading process in general
and reading comprehension in particular, since the teacher can check his or her students’
understanding easily and can adjust the reading materials and exercises to suit the students’
ability. Therefore, it should be applied in teaching and learning a foreign language.
1.2.2.2. According to purposes

People do not usually read unless they have a reason or a purpose for reading. They
always have a need of some kind that can be satisfied through reading. In the case of an
effective reader, his reason for reading will also determine his style of reading and the
relevant reading skills to be used because the purpose could be very general when he reads
for pleasure or escape. On the other hand, it could be specific like looking up a telephone
directory for someone’ phone number he can not use the same way of reading.
According to Nutgall (2000: 38), there are two main types of reading, namely,
intensive and extensive readings, these are not just two contrasting ways of reading but an
infinitive variety of interrelated strategies; both of them are complementary and necessary.
* Intensive reading (IR)
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. IR means
reading short texts to extract specific information. Its main concern is for detailed
comprehension. In IR, students normally work with short texts with close guidance from
the teacher. The aim of IR is to help students obtain detailed meaning from the context, to
develop reading skills- such as identifying main ideas and recognizing text connectors- and
to enhance vocabulary and grammar knowledge. Nutgall’s opinion about this kind of
reading is: “Intensive reading involves approaching the text under the close guidance of
the teacher or under the guidance of task which forces the students to pay great attention

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to the text” Nuttal (1982: 23). “Intensive reading”, from Francoise’s point of view, “means
reading short texts to extract specific information. This is an accuracy activity that involves
reading for detailed” Francoise (1981: 41). It can be inferred that IR often refers to the
careful reading of shorter, more difficult foreign language texts with the goal of complete
and detailed understanding. IR is also associated with the teaching of reading in terms of
its component skills. Texts are studied intensively in order to introduce and practice

reading skills such as distinguishing the main idea of a text from the detail, finding
pronoun referents, or guessing the meaning of unknown words.
* Extensive reading (ER)
In everyday life, to read extensively means to read widely and in quantity. In the
early part of this century, extensive reading took on a special meaning in the context of
teaching modern languages. Some researchers such as Harold Palmer in Britain and
Michael West in India worked out the theory and practice of extensive reading as an
approach to foreign language teaching in general, and to the teaching of foreign language
reading in particular.
Carrell and Carson (1997: 49,50) stated that “extensive reading generally involves
rapid reading of large quantities of material or longer reading for general understanding,
with the focus generally on the meaning of what is being read than on the language.”
Although this definition provides an overview of ER, Davis (1995: 329) offers another
description of ER from an English Language Teaching (ELT) classroom implementation
perspective: “An extensive reading program is supplementary class library scheme,
attached to an English course, in which pupils are given the time, encouragement, and
materials to read pleasurably, at their own level, as many books as they can, without the
pressures of testing or marks. Thus, pupils are competing only against themselves, and it is
up to the teacher to provide the motivation and monitoring to ensure that the maximum
number of books is being read in the time available. The watchwords are quantity and
variety, rather than quality, so that books are selected for their attractiveness and relevance
to the pupils’ lives, rather than for literary merit”.
According to Grellet (1981: 2) ER means “reading a longer text usually for one’s
own pleasure. This is a fluency activity, mainly involving general understanding”. Sharing
the same view, Hammer (1986: 497) claimed that: “Extensive reading would normally start
with reading for the main ideas or for general information then for general comprehension

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and finally, after much practice, for details comprehension”. ER is generally associated
with reading large amounts with the aim of getting an overall understanding of the
material. Readers are more concerned with the meaning of the text than the meaning of
individual words or sentences. In fact, most of ER is usually done silently and outside the
classroom, it gives the students opportunities to use their knowledge of the target language
for their own purposes. Besides, it provides the valuable reinforcement of language items
and structure already presented in the classroom, gives the students chance to update and
enrich their language knowledge by reading the topics they like and read for enjoyment
without consideration for pressure of time, intense concentration, and total comprehension.
ER therefore, is regarded as an effective way for the students to improve their language
reading; it helps students enhance language learning in such areas as spelling, vocabulary,
grammar, and text structure. Besides, it gives students more positive attitude toward
reading offers them greater enjoyment of reading, helps them to read with pleasure. It is
also considered as an advisable sort of work for the students to increase and improve their
general knowledge of the world as well.
Basing on the purposes of reading, people may be skimming or scanning as they are
reading extensively.
* Skimming
According to Grellet (1981: 19) skimming appears when “we go through the
reading material quickly in order to get its main points or the intention of the writer, but
not to find the answer to specific questions”. And Nuttall (1982: 36) also stated that “By
skimming, we mean glancing rapidly through a text to determine whether a research paper
is relevant to our own work or in order to keep ourselves superficially informed about
matters that are not of great importance to us”. In addition to the definitions of skimming,
Wood (1990: 92) said that “When the reader looks at the content page of the book, or the
chapter headings, sub headlines, etc. This is sometimes called previewing. Another
example is when reader glances quickly through a newspaper to see the main items of the
day are. This will often mean just glancing at the headlines”. That means when we quickly
to get general impression to see whether the text is useful to us, it is not necessarily

searching for a specific details and key words. Skimming provides an overview of the text
so it is beneficial to look at chapter/ section headings, summaries and opening paragraphs,

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therefore, the purpose of skimming are to check relevance of the text and to set the scene
for more concentrated effort that is to follow if the text is useful.
To sum up, skimming is a very useful reading skill for students, and it is advisable
to apply at the first stage of teaching reading with the hope that it can help them to have an
overview of what they are reading. Moreover, it will be easier for them to deal with the
other tasks that followed.
* Scanning
Based on the theory of scanning made by Williams (1986: 100) “Scanning occurs
when a reader goes through a text very quickly in order to find a particular point of
information”, it can be understood that scanning is very high speed reading. When you
scan, you often have a question in your mind. You do not read every word, only the words
that answer your question. Practice scanning can help you to skip over unimportant words
so that you can read faster. Scanning is another useful skill of reading which involves
finding a particular piece of information that we need. In scanning, we-the reader, usually
focus on searching the information we want, moving our eyes quickly along the lines. That
is why scanning is widely used in everyday life. For example, you might scan the list of
names in a telephone directory in order to find a phone number. It can also be usually
practiced with variety of sources such as dictionaries, indexes, advertisements, magazine,
newspaper articles, encyclopedia entries, labels, or reference materials and so on. Scanning
is regarded as a useful and important technique that helps students understand the gist of
the texts well.
Generally speaking, there are different styles of reading and they are determined not
by the texts but by the readers’ reasons for reading. An effective reader is the one who can

adapt his flexibly according to his purpose of reading. A reader skims through the text to
see what it is about before scanning for specific information he is looking for. He does not
choose the text either extensively or intensively. To understand a text, these types of
reading are not used separately but in a combination altogether.
1.3. Teaching and learning reading skills
1.3.1. The importance of reading in foreign language learning
In the process of teaching and learning a second or foreign language, the teaching
and learning of reading are always received much attention, since it is regarded as one of
the most important major skills as what Carrell (1971: 1) stated: “for many students,

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reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills, particularly in English as a
second or foreign language”. This is also true for the MSA, because at our academy,
reading is an active skills namely speaking, listening and writing. To master reading skill is
always challenging task that requires students a number of factors: a good competence of
English grammar, rich vocabulary, and reading techniques. First of all, reading helps
students learn to think in English, enlarge their English vocabulary, improve their writing.
Richard (1993:4) claimed that “reading may help to increase knowledge of the target
language through exposure to new vocabulary and grammatical structures”. There is a
close relationship between reading and vocabulary knowledge, because while reading, the
readers know most of the words in the text already, and they can also determine the
meaning of many of the unfamiliar words from the contexts. Therefore, the best way to
acquire a large vocabulary is to read. It is understandable that anyone who has a large
vocabulary is usually a good reader.
Besides, Richard (1993: 4) also stated that “reading in the new language is also an
important way to learn about the target culture”, which means that reading provides the
students with a wide range of interesting information, helps them understand the ways of

life, behaviors, thoughts and other aspect of the native people and it is also a good way to
find out about new ideas, facts and experiences. Therefore, they can master vocabulary,
grammar and the background knowledge or cross-cultural problems that they encounter.
In other words, reading is very important to the foreign language learners because it widen
their knowledge of language and life. In the context of MSA, it seems to be the most
important skill to the students of English since their main purpose is to understand the
written texts.
1.3.2. Factors in teaching and learning reading
1.3.2.1. Teacher’s role
Many linguistics state that the teacher is the most important factor in teaching
reading. In a reading class, the teacher plays so many roles, such as an organizer, a
manager and a counselor, an instructional expert, so he or she should be a guide to assist,
encourage them, employ various types to support the students develop reading skills. He or
she also the person who provides the students with an anxiety-free atmosphere which helps
them feel free to join new reading style, practice to master new strategies, work under
pressure of time.

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Besides, linguistics point out an essential element of the teacher’s role-a model
reader. According to Nuttall (1982: 192) “showing that you are a reader means carrying
books around with you, referring to books as you teach, reading out brief passages that
may interest students, talking about what you are reading at the moment, and handling
books as if you loved them”. He also states that “teacher’s job as providing, first, suitable
texts and second, activities that will focus the students’ attention on the texts”
1.3.2.2. Students’ role
Obviously, students themselves play an important role in improving their own
reading skills. Nuttall (2003: 33) provides several major roles for the students in a reading

lesson. First, they should “take an active part in reading”. This is the first and foremost
responsibility of the learners. They have to be active and take charge of what they do.
Second, students have to take the risk of making mistakes because a mistake is an
opportunity to learn. The next thing is “monitoring comprehension”, which means students
need to understand how texts work and what they do when they read. They have to learn
how to carry on a dialogue with the text. The last thing for them to do is learning not to
cheat oneself, students who do not want to learn to read can easily cheat, but in fact, they
are cheating themselves, it is just a waste of time and their opportunities as well.
1.3.2.3. The reading texts
It can not be denied that reading texts play a crucial role in teaching and learning
reading because through them new grammar, phonetic and lexical items of the target
language are introduced. Furthermore, texts are also means to help students enrich their
background knowledge and vocabulary as well. In reading lesson, students are supposed to
understand the texts correctly as much as possible, learn some new language items e.g.
words, structures, and use what they have got from the text through reading tasks and
communication activities that follow. Therefore, in teaching reading, the teacher should
pay much attention to the following aspects such as language content, vocabulary and
grammatical structures, types of reading activities, though it is not simple thing to do as
what Buck, G (2001) states: “Providing suitable texts is not a simple matter. It takes time,
effort and some expertise”.
1.4. Theoretical background of motivation
1.4.1. Definition and types of motivation
It is common knowledge that motivation is vast and complicated subject
encompassing many theories. Motivation is thought to be important and inevitable in most

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fields, without which one is difficult to succeed. Most definitions of motivation reflect that

motivation is an internal state or condition that serves to activate or energize behavior and
give it direction. Kleinginna (1981: 6) defines motivation as “a desire or want that
energizes and directs goal-oriented behavior”. Sharing the same point, Brown (2000: 160)
indicates that “motivation is some kinds of internal drive which pushes someone to do
things in order to achieve something”. Motivation is also suggested by Woolfork (2001:
136) as “an internal state that arouses, directs and maintains behavior”.
Kinds of motivation and their features have been discussed by scholars and
psychologists, who refer to motivation which comes from inside as well as from outside.
According to the researchers, there are many different kinds of motivation such as
Integrative, Instrumental Intrinsic, Extrinsic, Global Situational, and Tasks. Among them,
intrinsic and extrinsic motivations have an important part in classroom motivation and they
are partially accessible to teacher influence.
* Intrinsic Motivation (IM)
According to Wlodkowsk (1991) intrinsic motivation refers to “motivation to
engage in an activity for its own sake”. Sharing the same point, Reeve (1996) defines that
intrinsic motivation “is the natural tendency to seek out and conquer challenges as we
pursue personal interests and exercise capabilities”. Raffini (1996) also states that “what
motivates us to do something when we do not have to do anything”. The factors that
support intrinsic motivation are competence-feeling that you know how to do things,
autonomy-being able to perform an activity by yourself without external help and
relatedness-connection with your social environment like helping the others. This can be
understood that intrinsic motivation comes from the individual, or in other words, from
one’s interest or curiosity.
* Extrinsic Motivation (IM)
We experience extrinsic motivation when we do something tin order to earn a grade
or reward or when we are not interested in the activity for its own sake. Harmer (2001)
indicates that extrinsic motivation is “caused by any number of outside factors such as the
need to pass an exam, the hope of financial reward or the possibility of future travel”.
Most writers agree that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation interact with each other
and play an important role in second language learning. As a result, students can be either

motivated by internal or external factors depending on the circumstances and conditions
the activity is performed.

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1.4.2. The importance of motivation in second language learning
As mentioned above, motivation is essential to success in most field of learning. We
will almost certainly fail to make the necessary effort without motivation. Many studies
have proved that motivation is very strongly related to achievement in language learning.
Brown (1990) shares this point of view by claiming that “a learner will be successful with
the proper motivation”.
There has been a great deal of research on the role of motivation in second language
learning. However, it is not simple for researchers to indicate precisely how motivation is
related to learning. This can be explained that “motivation in second language is a complex
phenomenon, which can be defined in terms of two factors: learners’ communicative needs
and their attitudes towards the second language community” (Lightbown and Spada,
1999). Motivation is one of the main determining factors in success in foreign or second
language learning. According to Oxford and Shearing (1996: 121,122) “motivation is
important because it directly influences how often students use L2 learning strategies, how
much students interact with native speakers, how much input they receive in the language
being learned (the target language), how well they do on curriculum-related achievement
tests, how high their general proficiency level becomes, and how long they persevere and
maintain L2 skills after language study is over…. Therefore, motivation is crucial for L2
learning, and it is essential to understand what our students’ motivations are”. In their
research on motivation, Brown, Mallow, Crooks, and Schmidt seem to be in favor of
intrinsic orientation. However, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are necessary for
language learners, especially for most Vietnamese learners, who are often influenced by
social and institutional factors like finding better job opportunities as well as pressure of

exams. That is why it is essential to make the learners aware that both intrinsic and
extrinsic motivations are beneficial in second language learning.
1.4.3. The importance of motivation in learning reading
Study on the importance of motivation in learning reading, Redneck and Lester,
(2000: 5) state that: “motivation is one of the most important ingredients in skilled
reading”. You can realize that you are more engaged when you are reading something that
interests you. There are many factors that can help you become interested in what you are
reading, such as: your thoughts, feelings, interests, and your background knowledge.
Reading motivation refers to the desire to read, even when not required to do so. Reading

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motivation involves seeking out opportunities to read for curiosity, knowledge, and
involvement. Researchers, who study on reading, recognize that in order to create lifelong
readers, endowing the learners with proficient reading are not enough. They also need to
have internalized motivation. Besides, reading material is another important factor that
greatly influences the students’ motivation in a reading lesson. First of all, if the reading
material is interesting and relevant to the students, it will motivate them to read more.
Reading material should have suitable contents, this means, the texts are considered
suitable will tell the students thing they do not know and introduce them to new and
relevant ideas. Secondly, reading material’s language items such as vocabulary and
grammatical structures may have an impact on the students’ motivation. Through the texts,
the students can understand the way the others feel or think and make them read for
themselves. In addition, teacher also poses an important factor in motivating the students in
a reading lesson. The teachers play the key role in creating a good classroom environment,
since it has a powerful effect on the encouragement or discouragement of motivation to
learn. Furthermore, the teachers’ activities and tasks are the key component to the students’
motivation learning reading skill. Therefore, the teachers should aware of their students’

needs, including their motivation for reading and the purpose that reading has in their lives.
They should provide suitable techniques to help the students to develop their competence
as readers during the reading lessons.
1.4.4. Definition and the importance of Pre-reading activities in learning reading
Different researchers such as Lazar (1993: 83), Chen and Graves (1995: 664),
Taglieber, Johnson and Yarbough (1988: 456), and Moorman and Blanton (1990: 176)
have provided many definitions of Pre-reading activities. Lazar for example, defines prereading activities as activities that help students with cultural background, stimulate
student interest in the story, and pre-teach vocabulary. Chen and Graves define Pre-reading
activities as “devices for bridging the gap between the text’s content and the reader’s
schemata”.
Focusing on L1 reading instruction, Taglieber, Johnson and Yarbough (1988: 456)
point out the motivational aspect of Pre-reading activities. According to these writers, prereading activities activate or develop prior knowledge, provide knowledge of the text
structure and also establish a reason for reading.

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It can not be denied that Pre-reading activities play a crucial important role in
motivating the students through the reading lesson. The aim of using Pre-reading activities
is to activate the reader’s background knowledge, to prevent failure, and to support the
reader’s interpretation of the text. Employing Pre-reading activities in the first stage of the
reading lesson can promote interaction between the reader and the text. Ur (1996)
emphasises that the aim of Pre-reading activities is to provide anticipation and activate
reader in the next stages of the reading process. The purpose of using these activities is to
develop a better self-awareness of the relationship between the reader’s meaning and the
author’s meaning; and to help readers understand the teacher’s expectations and views.
1.5. Summary
In this chapter, the relevant literature which has helped from the theoretical
background and conceptual framework for the study is presented. First, definitions of

reading and reading comprehension have been given. Second, some kinds of reading
suggested by different theorists have been presented and taken into consideration. What is
more, concepts and ideas about motivation in general and in second language learning in
particular have been mentioned. In addition, the importance of motivation and the factors
affecting the students’ motivation in learning reading skill as well as definitions and the
importance of Pre-reading activities have also been reviewed. The next chapter will display
the methodology and findings of the research in the light of the theories mentioned above.

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Chapter 2
THE STUDY
2.1. Introduction
In this chapter, the author attempts to outline two parts of the study. The first part
focuses on the current situation of teaching and learning reading skill at the MSA, in which
the description of the subjects as well as settings for the study and instruments are
discussed. The second part is an analysis on the data collected from the survey
questionnaires and the class observation.
2.2. Situation analysis
2.2.1. Aims of the study
Being a teacher of English at the English Department, MSA for over ten years, I have
decided to carry out a survey on pre-reading activities conducted by the teachers and students
at the MSA in order to find out whether the assumption above is true or not. Finally, I will
come up with a suggestion of some possible pre-reading activities with the hope to motivate
students in reading lessons as well as to improve their reading skills in general.
2.2.2. The setting of the study
This study was conducted at the MSA, where the author is teaching. The Academy
has been in operation for more than fifty years. It is the unique Military College of the

Ministry of Defense that train teachers, translators, interpreters and others who need
foreign languages in their jobs. English is only one of many other languages taught such as
French, Chinese, Russian, Thai, etc. The students have to go through a four-year course
learning both background and specialized knowledge.
Like other languages, in the English Department, English is taught in a formal
setting known as a classroom. The teaching is divided into two stages. During the first
stage, students spend the first two years studying general English and the four macro
language skills such as speaking, reading, listening and writing under the guidance of the
teachers. Usually, three or four teachers are in charge of a class, each of them is
responsible for teaching one or two language skills using certain textbooks selected by the
staff of the Department and additional materials chosen by the teachers themselves. At the
second stage, the students have to spend time on studying other subjects like grammar,
phonetic, lexicology, country study, translations, methodology English and American
literature, etc. The students have English classes almost every working day. However,

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class time spent for reading skill might not be sufficient enough; particularly at an
intermediate level because there are only two periods of reading per week (each period
lasts for 45 minutes).
Furthermore, the students learn English in the Vietnamese context and do not have
any chance to be in contact with the native speakers, thus, they are only learn English in a
foreign language setting. This is another obstacle that prevents them from mastering
English in general and the reading skill in particular.
2.2.3. Subjects
This study was carried out with the participation of 30/45 full-time teachers aged
from 25 to 45 (half of them have been in Great Britain, Australia, America and India for
further training) and 80/110 second-year students and they are learning text book More

Reading Power.
(*) Of the 30 teachers, they all have Diploma Degree in English while twenty of
them have M.A. Degree in Education, Linguistics, or International Relations and another
one has Ph.D. Degree in Linguistics. Most of them have at least three years of teaching,
therefore, with no doubt, they are experienced and enthusiastic teachers, they are always
willing to help their students overcome the difficulties and make progress in learning
English. These teachers are now teaching English to the students of different courses at the
MSA: full time, short time courses (These courses last for about two years and they are
used for Army Officers who have Diploma Degree in other foreign languages and now are
serving in different branches of the Army belonging to the Ministry of Defense).
(*) The 80 students under investigation are in the second term of the second year at
the English Department of the MSA (both cadet and civilian students, male and female).
These students’ ages are between 20 and 22 years old. They are supposed to have quite an
equal knowledge of English before entering the MSA since most of them have learnt
English for at least 7 years (from grade 6 to grade 12 at school). Moreover, they all passed
a very challenging entrance exam. Some of them come from Hanoi, the rest come from
different provinces around the country. These students were chosen from 110 second year
students during the school year of 2006-2007. They have completed their first three terms
of the four-year course. Of course it was very difficult to select a sample of individuals
since the students had already assigned to four different classes.

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2.2.4. Reading materials
2.2.4.1. An overview of the textbook More Reading Power
English has been made compulsory in the curriculum of our Academy. It is mainly
taught to those who work for the Ministry of Defense and most of them are army officersto-be. When they enter the academy, they continue to study English for at least four years.
During this time, they are divided into two stages: The first stage is for pre-intermediate

and intermediate levels. The second one is for upper-intermediate and advanced levels. The
students have to work very hard to gain knowledge of English to support for their jobs
when graduating since they use English as main tool in their work. For the last several
years, English teaching methodology has been improved much and course-books have
been changed yearly to meet the demand of the students at the MSA. The text book More
Reading Power is chosen as a core text book for teaching reading to the second year
students at our Academy. They have only 30 periods of reading for each term, which
counts for 60 periods for the whole second year, so the teacher who teaches reading has to
select only some typical reading lessons in the textbook More Reading Power for teaching,
but not all the lessons included in the book. Other texts have been read by the students
themselves at home as homework or reference materials.
2.2.4.2. Structure of the textbook More Reading Power
Considering the need to learn reading at the MSA, the importance role of reading in
the students’ future job and its practical purposes, More Reading Power appears to be one
of the most suitable and productive textbook for second year students. Many students have
a conceptualization of reading which is interferes with their reading in English. More
Reading Power aims to help students acquire an accurate understanding of what it means
to read in English. Student awareness of reading and thinking process is further encouraged
in many parts of the book by exercises which require them to work in pairs or

small

groups. In discussion with others, students need to formulate and articulate their ideas
more precisely, and so they also acquire new ways of talking and thinking about a text.
Students are also required to write and then read each other’s work so they can experience
the connections between reading and writing. This book is different from other reading
books. More Reading Power is divided into four parts so the learners can practice in four
different kinds of reading skills.

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Part one: Reading for Pleasure
Many students have never learned to enjoy reading for pleasure (reading
extensively) in English. We all know that in order to be a good reader, it is necessary to
read a lot. Students must understand the importance of reading extensively, and then they
must be encouraged to develop the habit of reading regularly for pleasure.
In this part, students are instructed to select books to read for pleasure or individual
basic. These books should be neither too easy nor difficult. They should not be books that
are required in other courses that students have already read in translation. Most important,
students should be encouraged to choose any books they want such as: fiction, nonfiction,
literature, or popular culture. What concerns most is that the book is of interest to the
individual student and that the student actually wants to read it.
Part two: Reading comprehension Skills
Reading is a very complex task involving many different skills. In this part of the book,
students will practice some important reading comprehension skills. Each new comprehension
skill is introduced with a rationale and practiced in a series of exercises sequenced from simple
to more difficult ones in order to build up the students’ mastery of the skill. The skills covered
include both “top-down” (concept-driven) and “bottom-up” (text-driven) models of reasoning
and comprehending. Through which they will learn to think in new ways about what they are
reading. And they may find that their reading comprehension in their native language will also
be improved. There are ten Units in this Part:
Unit 1: Scanning.
Unit 2: Previewing and Predicting
Unit 3: Vocabulary Knowledge for Effective Reading
Unit 4: Topics
Unit 5: Topics of Paragraphs
Unit 6: Main ideas
Unit 7: Patterns of Organization

Unit 8: Skimming
Unit 9: Making inferences
Unit 10: Summarizing
The exercises in this part are grouped under headings which refer to the following
specific skills and areas:

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* Scanning: Speed is essential skill that mainly discussed in unit one of this part,
students are encouraged to scan different sources of materials under pressure of time. They
are also given an opportunity to practice asking and writing questions which helps them
learn to ask themselves questions as they read.
* Previewing and Predicting: Before reading a passage, the students usually ask
themselves what they know about the subject matter. Previewing and Predicting make
easier to see what information they already know about what they read the passage
Previewing and Predicting are considered to be essential skills for a good reader that help
students predict or make some educated guesses about what is in the passage. These
reading skills also encourage students to get some ideas about what they will read process
the information more quickly and will also be able to follow the writer’s ideas better.
* Dealing with unfamiliar words: As we all know that, in the process of language
learning in general, learning of a foreign language in particular, vocabulary plays a crucial
important role. This part tries to convince the students that it is not always necessary to
look up the words in the dictionaries. It also mentioned some advantages to guessing
meaning and points out that there are multiple clues to meaning such as: guessing unknown
vocabulary, guessing meaning from context in sentences, using grammar to guess word
meaning and recognizing words that connect ideas.
* Understanding the topics: When the students read for the meaning, they should
begin by looking for the topic. This helps them connect what they read to what they

already know. Through the exercises provided in these units, students are required to
choose topic of a group of words, or identify the topics from the words and paragraphs
given, etc.
* Extracting main ideas: Sometimes it is difficult to see what the main ideas of a
passage are, or to distinguishing between important and unimportant information. The
exercises in unit six of this part encourage students to read for the general sense rather than
for the meaning of every single word.
* Understanding text organization patterns: Students may have trouble in seeing how
a passage is organized. The exercises in unit 7 of this part give practice in recognizing how
sentences are joined together to make paragraphs form the passage, and how this
organization is signaled. Besides, the students are also work with four of the most common
patterns of organization such as: Listing, Sequence, Comparison/ Contrast and Cause-Effect

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* Writing summaries: Summarizing is usually viewed as a writing skill, but it is
also a very useful reading skill, since it requires the reader to monitor comprehension. In
order to summarize the reader must understand thoroughly the main idea and the main
points of a text. Therefore, most of exercises in unit ten involve the students in actively
writing summaries. In summarizing, the students must try to condense and paraphrase the
ideas in the text. These skills often do not come easily to students, but they are essential for
many kinds of writing.
Part three: Thinking skill
Learning to read well in English means learning to think in English, however, many
students are used to translating as they read and have great difficulty thinking in another
language. If the students want to read well in English, they must think in English when
they read. If they think in another language and translate form the English, they will
always have difficulty with comprehension. Understanding the words and grammar is not

enough; they need to be able to follow the ideas in English. The exercises in this part are
designed to help students develop their ability to follow ideas and thinking in English.
Part four: Reading faster
Learning to read faster must be a key part of any reading improvement program.
There are two basic reasons for this. First, students in most academic settings are faced
with an enormous quantity of reading in English. Many ESL/EFL students take three to
four times longer than native-language students to complete reading texts, which means
that they have little time left to assimilate what they have read.
The other reason for learning to read faster is that it leads to a better comprehension.
When reading faster, the eyes cannot focus on every word; they must focus on group of
words together. This makes it much easier for the brain to reconstruct meaning.
Furthermore, since reading faster forces the reader to skip unknown or nonessential words,
the brain can concentrate better on the general meaning of the text.
Generally speaking, the book More Reading Power provides students with a wide
range of different reading tasks that help them improve their reading techniques such as:
Scanning, Skimming, Predicting and Previewing, Identifying Topics, etc.
Besides, the reading texts in More Reading Power are of the students’ interests, for
example, in unit one they have chance to get to know more about Marie Curie and
Satellites. In other units, they can read about Elephants, Basketball in the United States, the

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Effects of Weather, and Climate, or about different subjects such as AutomobilesProblems and Solutions, Sources of Disease, Oil spill, etc.
However, there are some reading texts containing many new and difficult words. Take
an example of unit four-Topics, in some exercises, they can not work out what is the topic or
topics for the group of words since they have to encounter many unknown words in the same
group, or they are unable to figure out the word that odd one out from the whole group of
words. Besides, their lack or poor of general background knowledge is also another drawback

that prevents them from reading effectively. Therefore, it is the teacher’s task to select and
apply suitable techniques and activities that can activate students’ basic knowledge and
increase their interests in the reading lesson, especially before they read the texts.
2.3. Sample and sampling
The sample was drawn from two sources: from 45 full-time teachers of English
aged from 25 to 45 and 110 second-year students and they are learning the text book More
Reading Power.
The researcher invited 30 teachers (about 67% of the population), they all have
Diploma Degree in English and twenty of them have M.A. Degree in Education,
Linguistics, or International Relations and another one has Ph.D. Degree in Linguistics.
The reason for choosing them was that all of them were teaching at the English
Department of the MSA. Most of them have at least three years of teaching, therefore, with
no doubt, they are experienced and enthusiastic teachers, they are always willing to help
their students overcome the difficulties and make progress in learning English.
The students under investigation are in the second term of the second year at the
English Department of the MSA (both cadet and civilian students, male and female, aged
from 19 to 25). They are divided into four groups and are supposed to have quite an equal
knowledge of English before entering the MSA since most of them have learnt English for
at least 7 years (from grade 6 to grade 12 at school). Moreover, they all passed a very
challenging entrance exam in order to become a student at our academy. These students
were chosen from 110 second year students during the school year of 2006-2007. They
have completed their first three terms of the four-year course. Of course it was very
difficult to select a random sample of individuals since the students had already assigned to
four different classes. The solution to this case is that instead of randomly selecting the
individuals, the researcher chooses classes for investigation. This method has two

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advantages: First of all, it is convenient for the researcher to observe the participants
completing the questionnaire in their class; secondly, these classes have students with quite
different knowledge of English (The cadets seem to be better at English than the civilian
ones). Three classes chosen are 16A (cadets), 5AD1 and 5AD2 (civilians), which include
80 students (about 73% of the second year students). Hopefully these students could be
representative for the rest of the students.
2.4. Instruments for collecting the data
2.4.1. Survey questionnaires
Using questionnaire allows the researcher to collect the data needed in quantitative
form. Besides, the researcher finds it quite easy to summarize, analyze, and report the
collected data because all informants answer the same questions. Moreover, the informants
are provided with an opportunity to express their attitudes towards teaching and learning
reading skills openly.
2.4.1.1. The questionnaires for the students
The questionnaire consists of 8 questions, which are divided into three parts. Part
one (includes questions 1, 2 and 3) aims at exploring the students’ attitudes towards prereading techniques. In part two, by answering questions 4, 5, 6, and 7, students have
chance to express their preferences for Pre-reading techniques. The final part of the
questionnaire (question 8) was made to find out the students’ comment on the Pre-reading
activities in the text book More Reading Power. Hopefully, it can help the researcher give
suggestions for providing the students with some more Pre-reading activities.
2.4.1.2. The questionnaires for the teachers
There are 8 questions in the questionnaire for the teachers and they were designed
with three main purposes. Firstly, through the answers to the first 4 questions, the
researcher will evaluate the teachers’ attitudes towards the role of Pre-reading activities in
a reading lesson. Then the current situation of using pre-reading activities in a reading
lesson will be surveyed with a view to seeing whether all teachers do the same thing in
every reading lesson, which Pre-reading activities the teachers often employ and their
difficulties when dealing with these activities. Question 7 is aimed at investigating the
teachers’ comments on Pre-reading activities available in the book More Reading Power.
The purpose of the last question (question 8) is to find out some suggestions used by other

teachers in order to make pre-reading stage of the reading lesson more interesting.

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