skkn EXAMINING THE PARTICIPATION OF THE 12TH FORM STUDENTS DURING READING ACTIVITIES AT LUONG THE VINH HIGH SCHOOL

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI
Đơn vị: Trường THPT chuyên Lương Thế Vinh
Mã số:.......................
SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

EXAMINING THE PARTICIPATION
OF THE 12TH FORM STUDENTS
DURING READING ACTIVITIES AT
LUONG THE VINH HIGH SCHOOL
Người thực hiện: HỒ THỊ THẢO TRINH
Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu:
Quản lý giáo dục ................................................. ¨
Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn tiếng Anh ........... R
Phương pháp giáo dục ....................................... ¨
Lĩnh vực khác ..................................................... ¨
Có đính kèm:
¨ Mô hình ¨ Phần mềm

¨ Phim ảnh

Năm học 2012 - 2013
1

¨ Giáo án điện tử


SƠ LƯỢC LÝ LỊCH KHOA HỌC
I.

THÔNG TIN VỀ CÁ NHÂN
1.

Họ và tên: HỒ THỊ THẢO TRINH

2.

Ngày tháng năm sinh: 28 tháng 11 năm 1973

3.

Chức vụ:
Đảng:
Chính quyền:

4.
II.

Đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT chuyên Lương Thế Vinh

TRÌNH ĐỘ ĐÀO TẠO
Trình độ: Thạc sỹ
Tốt nghiệp: Victoria University

III. KINH NGHIỆM KHOA HỌC
Đã trực tiếp tham gia giảng dạy: 17 năm
Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm trong 5 năm gần đây:
o Teaching grammar in light of communicative language
teaching
o Applying communicative activities in english reading class
o Topic-based vocabulary teaching to students majoring in
English

2


SỞ GD&ĐT ĐỒNG NAI
Trường THPT chuyên Lương Thế Vinh
_____________

CỘNG HOÀ XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM
Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc
_______________
Biên Hoà, ngày ..03.. tháng 05 năm 2013

PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT ĐÁNH GIÁ SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM
Năm học: 2012 – 2013
Tên chuyên đề: EXAMINING THE PARTICIPATION OF THE 12TH FORM
STUDENTS DURING READING ACTIVITIES AT LUONG
THE VINH HIGH SCHOOL
Họ và tên tác giả: HỒ THỊ THẢO TRINH

Tổ: Ngoại ngữ

Lĩnh vực:
Quản lý giáo dục .............. ¨

Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn tiếng Anh .......... ¨

Phương pháp giáo dục ... ¨

Lĩnh vực khác.................................................... ¨

1.

Tính mới
-

Có giải pháp hoàn toàn mới ............................................................ ¨

-

Có giải pháp cải tiến, đổi mới từ phương pháp đã có ....................... ¨

2.

Hiệu quả
-

Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao ¨

-

Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng
trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao .............................................................. ¨

-

Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng tại đơn vị có hiệu quả cao............ ¨

-

Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng
tại đơn vị có hiệu quả ................................................................................ ¨

3.

Khả năng áp dụng
-

Căn cứ được các luận cứ khoa học cho việc hoạch định đường lối chính sách:
Tốt ......... ¨
Khá ......... ¨
Đạt .......... ¨

-

Đưa ra các giải pháp khuyến nghị có khả năng ứng dụng thực tiễn dễ thực hiện
và dễ đi vào cuộc sống:
Tốt ......... ¨
Khá ......... ¨
Đạt .......... ¨

-

Đã được áp dụng trong thực tế đạt hiệu quả hoặc có khả năng áp dụng đạt
hiệu quả trong phạm vi rộng:
Tốt ......... ¨
Khá ......... ¨
Đạt .......... ¨

XÁC NHẬN CỦA TỔ CHUYÊN MÔN

THỦ TRƯỞNG ĐƠN VỊ

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1 - INTRODUCTION
1.1 - Statements of the problems and rationale of the study
Innovations in teaching and learning English have become an important
issue in the world because English is considered as the language of
globalization, international communication, commerce and trade, the media
and pop culture (Richards, 2002). Since the introduction of the new English
textbooks for Vietnamese high schools seven years ago, teachers have
seemingly become more motivated to teach English as the new curriculum
focuses on all the four skills of English and highlights task-based
communicative approach. As for 12th form students, mastering English is
very important because they will have to take part in the National
Examination for the General Certificate of Secondary Education, in which
English is a compulsory subject. English is also one of the subjects for the
Entrance Examination of some national and international universities. In
teaching and learning English as a foreign language, reading has always
received a great deal of attention. Therefore, how to teach and learn reading
effectively requires many efforts from both teachers and learners. Carrell
(1984, p.1) states, “reading is by far the most important of the four macro
skills, particularly in English as a second or a foreign language”. In fact,
becoming an effective and fluent reader in another language has a number of
important benefits for the learner. First, reading in the target language may
help students consolidate the learning that has taken place. Second, it may
help students to increase knowledge of the target language through exposure
to new vocabulary and grammatical structures.

During 8 months of teaching reading comprehension to class 12A1 (
non-English majored class ) of Luong The Vinh High School, the researcher
found that her students confronted five major obstacles in reading such as:
the habits of word-by-word reading; overemphasis on forms rather than
meaning; excessive focus on details rather than main ideas; poor vocabulary
4


and limited background knowledge. As an English teacher who has been
teaching English for 17 years, the researcher wishes to take a serious look at
the teaching and learning of English in general and the teaching and learning
of the reading skills in particular so as to suggest suitable techniques to
enable the teaching and learning of reading comprehension at high schools
to be more effective. This matter of fact has inspired the researcher to
conduct the research into the participation of the 12th form students during
reading activities in the hope that through this study, the researcher will have
better teaching plans in order to improve students’ reading skills.
1.2- Research questions
Based on the above rationale, the research aims to answer the following
questions:
1.

What are the students’ attitudes towards the teaching and learning of
reading?

2.

What difficulties do the students meet when dealing with a reading
lesson?

3.

What techniques are suggested to help the 12th-form students at Luong
The Vinh High School improve their reading comprehension?

2 - LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 - Definition of reading and reading comprehension
Reading is an activity with a purpose. A person may read in order to
gain information or verify existing knowledge, or in order to critique a
writer's ideas or writing style. A person may also read for enjoyment, or to
enhance knowledge of the language being read. The purposes for reading
guide the reader's selection of texts.

5


Ur (1996, p.38) defines "reading means reading and understanding".
According to Harmer (1989, p.153), "reading is an exercise dominated by
the eyes and the brain. The eyes receive messages and the brain then has to
work out the significance of these messages".
Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and
the text, resulting in comprehension. The text presents letters, words,
sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader uses knowledge,
skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is. Readers’ knowledge,
skills, and strategies include:
ü Linguistic competence: the ability to recognize the elements of
the writing system; knowledge of vocabulary; knowledge of how
words are structured into sentences
ü Discourse competence: knowledge of discourse markers and
how they connect parts of the text to one another

ü Sociolinguistic competence: knowledge about different types of
texts and their usual structure and content
ü Strategic competence: the ability to use top-down strategies as
well as knowledge of the language (a bottom-up strategy)
The purpose(s) for reading and the type of text determine the specific
knowledge, skills, and strategies that readers need to apply to achieve
comprehension. Reading comprehension is thus much more than decoding.
Reading comprehension happens when the reader knows which skills and
strategies are appropriate for the type of text, and understands how to apply
them to accomplish the reading purpose.
It is obvious that reading comprehension plays an important role in
teaching and learning reading a foreign language. It has the nature of
communication, in which reading activity acts as a means of communication
between the writer and the reader.

6


Swam (1975, p.1) proposes “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.”
Grelet

(1981,

p.3)

considers

“reading

comprehension

or

understanding a written text means extracting the required information from
it as effectively as possible.”
Though these opinions are not exactly the same, what comes up as a
common point is that reading comprehension is the process in which the
readers, as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and
understand what is implied behind these forms.
2.2- Kinds of reading
Nutall (2000, p.38) indicates two main types of reading: intensive and
extensive reading. For him, these are not just two contrasting ways of reading
but an infinitive variety of interrelated and overlapping strategies. Actually,
both of these two types are complementary and necessary.
a. Intensive Reading
Nutall (2000, p.38) states that intensive reading involves approaching
the text under the guidance of a teacher or a task which forces the student to
focus on the text. According to Brown (1990, p.297), intensive reading "is
usually a classroom-oriented activity in which students focus on the
linguistic or semantic details of a passage". The objective of intensive
reading is to understand not only what the text means but also how the
meaning is produced.
b. Extensive Reading
Extensive reading is generally associated with reading large quantities
with the aim of getting an overall understanding of the material. Lewis and
Hill (1992, p.109) point out that "extensive reading means students have a
general understanding of the text without necessarily understanding every
word". This type of reading is suitable for students' self-learning in order to

7


train them to read directly and fluently in the foreign language for their own
enjoyment without the aid of the teacher. However, extensive reading can be
best achieved only through an instructional program. Extensive reading
sometimes involves skimming and scanning as strategies to gain general
sense of a text, skimming for the gist and scanning for some key details.
In short, for second or foreign language learners, both intensive and
extensive reading are of great importance as they act as a means to gain
knowledge but also to develop learners' language skills.
2.3- Reading in second language learning and teaching
In a second language classroom, reading plays a significant role in
building both linguistic and background knowledge for other language skills.
It is a fact that reading tasks in the classroom do not always correspond to
real-life purposes. As pointed out by Nuttall (1996, p.223), plenty of reading
tasks merely require students to answer task questions like gap-fill or
multiple choice questions. Consequently, they fail to reflect how the students
comprehend similar texts in the real world. In fact, there exist numerous
reasons for our real-life reading. As far as it is concerned, Nuttall
distinguishes functional texts from descriptive, discursive texts and fiction.
Accordingly, texts like leaflets, notices and advertisements belong to the
former due to their practical purposes which are evident and typical of their
genres. On the contrary, when reading descriptive and discursive texts and
fiction, the readers may have various aims, most typically to make decisions
or express the extent of agreement with the author’s arguments.
As argued by Nuttall (1996, p.16), there are two main ways for a reader
to process a text. Specifically, students may take the bottom-up approach, in
which “the reader builds up a meaning by […] recognizing letters and words,
working out sentence structures”. Otherwise, their “intelligence and

experience” may serve as a means of comprehending the text if they take
“the top-down approach”. Whereas the bottom-up approach suffered from
severe criticism in the past, recent studies have suggested that interactive
8


reading, which combines both approaches to processing a reading text, may
account for efficient reading (Stanovich, 1980, cited in Nunan, 1989, p.33).
So far, there have been various approaches to teaching reading, such as
the traditional approach, process-based approach and task-based approach.
In all these approaches, apart from the evident roles of learners in the process
of reading comprehension, the roles of teachers in an EFL reading lesson are
also significant and worth mentioning. On the one hand, Nuttall (2000, p.3233) specifies some of these roles as choosing reading texts, designing tasks,
facilitating reading process and monitoring progress. He thus comes to a
conclusion that there is always a great deal for the teacher to do in a reading
lesson. On the other hand, he also reminds teacher of several pitfalls in
teaching reading, in which “testing instead of teaching” and teacher’s overly
dominance in processing the reading texts are among the most common
mistakes.
Nuttall (2000, p.33) mentions several main roles for the students in a
reading lesson. They are as follows:
-

Taking an active part in learning: This is the first and foremost
responsibility of the learner. They have to be active and take
charge of what they do

-

Monitoring comprehension: Students need to understand how

texts work and what they do when they read.

-

Learning text talk: It is clear that a good reader carries on a
dialogue with the text. Consequently, the students have to learn
how to do this. An effective way to promote this skill is to talk about
texts in class.

-

Taking risks: Students have to take the risk of making mistakes
because a mistake is an opportunity to learn.

-

Learning not to cheat oneself: Learning to read is learning to give
students enormous advantages in life. It may lead to better jobs, to
9


personal development, interest and enjoyment. Students who do
not want to learn to read can easily cheat but they are only
cheating themselves.

3 - METHODOLOGY
3.1 - Participants
The process of data collection involved the participation of 45 students
of class 12A1.
3.2 - Material

Reading lessons in Tiếng Anh 12 textbooks consist of three stages
“Before you read” “While you read” and “After you read” to facilitate
students’ reading comprehension.
This three-stage model is to minimize time consumption and maximize
reading effectiveness.
3.3 - Data collection instrument
For forty-five students, using questionnaires seems to be an
appropriate choice. Brown (2001, p. 6)

states that questionnaires are

effective for obtaining the views of all the participants. With a view to
examining students’ attitudes towards class reading activities, The
questionnaire was designed to get information concerning:
1.

Students’ reasons for learning English

2.

Students’ attitudes towards the role of reading

3.

Students’ attitudes towards class reading activities

4.

Students’ difficulties when learning reading at school

5.

Students’ expectations towards their teachers
10


6.

Students’ effort for improving their reading comprehension

4 - DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
4.1 - Data analysis
4.1.1 - Students’ reasons for learning English
The data obtained from the students’ questionnaire will be discussed to
find out the students’ purposes of learning English.
RESULTS
OPTIONS
N

%

Communicating effectively in English

20

44.4

Passing the school graduation exam

45

100

Completing a compulsory subject at school

13

28.9

Preparing for the future jobs

25

55.6

Studying abroad

4

8.9

Others

1

1

Table 1: Students’ reasons for learning English (N = 45)
As shown in the above table, the main purpose of learning English of all
of the 12A1students is to pass the school graduation exam (100%). In the

meanwhile, 44.4% of the students learn English with the aim of
communicating, 28.9% for completing a compulsory subject, 8.9 % for
studying abroad and only 2.2 % (1 student) answered that he just loved
English. It is interesting to discover that 55.6 % of the students showed their
main reason for studying English was to meet the future job requirements.
They seem to know that with the rapid development and expansion of
information technologies, there should be a common language for people of
11


all countries to exchange information and it is English that is used as means
of international communication.
4.1.2 - Students’ attitudes towards the role of reading
a. Students’ attention paid to the aspects of language taught at school
The survey results indicate that 100 % of the students spend most of
their time on learning Grammar and vocabulary whereas 40% on reading,
35.6 % on speaking, 22.2 % on writing and only 17.7 % on listening. It is
not surprising to discover that students spend more time on grammar and
vocabulary than other skills because their main purpose of learning English
is to pass the graduation examination.
b. Students’ attitude towards the importance of learning reading
comprehension at school
Fascinatingly, most of the students have positive attitudes towards
reading. 88.9 % of them find the importance of reading and important (22.2%
chose “very important” and 66.7% “important”). However, a certain number
of students (11.6 %) do not highly appreciate the important role of reading.
It seems that reading is not very beneficial to them.
c. Students’ attitude toward the benefit of reading
In the survey, 31 students (68.9%) admit that reading can help them
enrich their vocabulary. Besides, reading can help 24 students (53.3%)

broaden their knowledge of the world and 19 students (42.2%) improve their
grammar. 18 students (40%) can improve other language skills through
reading. This could reflect the fact that all the four skills ought to be
combined in a reading lesson. In other words, integrating these skills in
teaching a language is very important for teachers.
4.1.3 - Students’ attitudes towards class reading activities
a.

Students’ attitude towards pre- reading activities

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66.7% realize that pre-teaching new vocabulary in the reading text is
the most popular technique or activity that teachers often use to help students
to get involved in the reading tasks easily. 53.3% agree that giving some
prereading questions to think before reading is necessary. An explanation
can be made here is that the technique might save teachers time and energy
from designing pre-reading activities. .
It can be seen from the result that the majority of the students like using
games to introduce the topic and brainstorming words or idea related to the
topic (60% and 55.6%, respectively). Some of them prefer using visual aid
to introduce the topic. However, most of them show that the teacher should
spend more time designing more pre-reading exercises for them.
b.

Students’ attitude towards while-reading activities
i.

Students’ activities when looking for specific information

A large number of students (53.3%) read the questions first and then
answer them by scanning the text. It is pleasing to see that these students
seem to have appropriate reading skills when finding out specific
information. However, there are still numerous students who apply
inappropriate reading skills. They often read the text carefully before reading
the questions and answer them or read the questions first and answer them
after understanding everything in the text (40% and 6.7%, respectively).
Applying inappropriate reading skills make students spend much time on
unnecessary information they do not need to look for.
ii.

Students’ activities when looking for the main idea of the text

Being asked what they often do when looking for the main idea of the
text, most of the students (71.1%) say they read the text carefully and then
choose the best answer after understanding every word. Only 28.9% propose
they skim the text to find the best answer.
iii.

Students’ activities when meeting new words

13


When unfamiliar words or structures appear, most students rely on
dictionaries or their friends for the meanings or explanations (57.8% and
62.2% respectively). Surprisingly, only 17.8% say they try to figure out the
meaning of the words from the context. Up to 26.7% admit that asking the
word meaning from the teachers is the easiest and most effective way.

c.

Students’ attitude toward post-reading activities

The data collected states clearly that students do not have the habit of
writing on the topics relevant to the reading text and discussing on the topics
in groups (just 3 students have this option). These techniques seem to be
difficult for these students to apply. Summarizing the text after reading is
very beneficial to students to gain better understanding and memorizing of
the text, but only 5 students often apply this. Doing multiple-choice exercises
after reading is also an easy and effective way to check students’
understanding about the texts. 35.6% admit that they are often allowed to do
this. It is surprising to see that 26 out of 45 students involving this study
propose that they often do nothing in post-reading. The reason they mention
is the time for a reading lesson. They usually lack time in reading.
The post-reading activities play an important part in improving students’
language skills. Students can consolidate or reflect upon what has been read
and relate it to their own knowledge. In short post-reading work contributes
enormously to develop writing, speaking and listening skills.
4.1.4 - Students’ difficulties when learning reading
The most difficult problem is the limited capacity of vocabulary and
grammatical structures. 39 students in the survey (86.7%) assume that if they
experience lots of new or difficult vocabulary and grammatical structures
from the text, their motivation for reading will surely be decreased. The next
one (71.1%) is the lack of appropriate reading strategies. It is obvious that
students cannot do reading tasks easily if they do not have appropriate
reading strategies. Therefore, it is very important for teachers to suggest their
14

students essential reading strategies needed for each kind of reading tasks.
21 out of 45 students (46.7%) blame on the lack of background knowledge
to the topic of the reading text. Whereas 24.4% of the students admit that
their motivation for reading is still poor. Only 6 students (13.3%) think that
they do not have enough time for their reading.
4.1.5 - The expectations of the students towards teachers’ reading
techniques
It is assumed that students involving in this study have certain
difficulties in learning reading, and thus when they are asked, “What do you
expect from your teachers to help you overcome difficulties in learning
reading?” Their responses as follows:
RESULTS
OPTIONS
N

%

28

62.2

21

46.7

2

4.4

Providing you with certain key words

24

53.3

Explaining clearly about the reading contexts

4

8.9

Suggesting you essential reading strategies needed for

32

71.1

29

64.4

Encouraging you to activate your previous knowledge
into reading texts
Creating comfortable environment for you to exchange
information before reading
Offering you as many chances to read the passage as you
expect

each kind of reading tasks
Exploiting different kinds of reading materials suitable

to your reading ability and your interest
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Table 2: The expectations of students towards teachers’ reading techniques
( N=45)
As can be seen from the table, the students wish to get a great deal of
support from their teachers to overcome difficulties in learning reading. The
majority, 71.1% of all students expect to get essential reading strategies,
which reveal that the grade 10 students lack sufficient reading strategies.
They need to be provided with more reading strategies to become effective
readers. 64.4% of the students in the survey wish to have more different
kinds of reading materials suitable to their abilities and interests. It is true
that students want to read what they like and what are relevant to them. 60
students involving in this study (62.2%) would like their teachers to
encourage them to activate their previous knowledge into reading texts.
53.3% desire to acquire new key words needed for the reading text so that
they can deal with reading tasks easily. It is not surprising to see that only
8.9% want their teachers to explain clearly about the reading contexts and
4.4% like to read the text as many times as they expect. It is hoped that
teachers are supposed to be instructors that need to be flexible in teaching
techniques so that they can help students overcome difficulties in language
learning, specifically in learning reading.
4.1.6 - Students’ effort for improving their reading comprehension
In order to improving the reading comprehension, all the students need
a lot of efforts. They often try their best in learning English. Surprisingly,
over half of the students think that they should learn all the new words by
heart for improving their reading comprehension. Having extensive reading
outside classroom ranks the second with 26.7% of the students think they
had better do this. 24.4% think they should share experience with their

friends to find out the best way of learning reading. Only 15.6% choose
searching for reading materials on the Internet. Besides their effort, they
can’t deny the role of the teachers who often help them much in learning.
4.2 - Findings
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The major issues addressed in the paper are summarized by briefly
answering the research questions as follows:
4.2.1 - Research question 1: What are the students’ attitudes towards the
teaching and learning of reading?
Although most of the 12A1 students are aware of the importance of
reading, it is still ranked the second behind grammar and vocabulary. This is
because it is easier to get marks from the questions related to grammar and
vocabulary. In exam papers, there seem to be more questions about grammar
and vocabulary.
Students express their positive attitudes to English learning. They
appreciate the importance of learning the language, especially, learning
reading. However, not all of them are satisfied with the topics, the lessons as
well as the techniques provided by their teachers.
4.2.2 Research question 2: What difficulties do the students meet when
dealing with a reading lesson?
From the data analysis, it is obvious that students’ main difficulties
which influence their motivation for reading as well as their understanding
are their limitation of vocabulary and grammatical structures, their lack of
appropriate reading strategies and their background knowledge. Both the
students and the teachers meet some problems for reading lessons. Students’
lack of background knowledge and world knowledge are considered the
biggest problems in a reading lesson. Reading comprehension can be
affected by background knowledge and world knowledge, with many

demonstrations that those who possess rich prior knowledge about the topic
of a reading often understand the reading better than the others with low prior
knowledge. Students’ lack of appropriate reading strategies and vocabulary
structures are the other problems which the teachers have to face.
4.2.3 Research question 3: What techniques are suggested to help the
12th-form students improve their reading comprehension?
17


What have been discussed and analyzed show that the number of the
students being effective readers is modest while the rest of the students seem
to be ineffective ones. Thus, it is time the teachers did something to help
their students as well as themselves overcome the difficulties and get more
effective reading lessons. Hopefully, the techniques suggested below can
serve as a tool to make reading lessons more interesting.
4.3 - Suggested techniques
4.3.1 - Techniques for reading interest and motivation
It is necessary to increase the students’ interest and motivation for
reading at the first stage because without the strong motivation of the
students, the reading lesson will be boring and tough. Teachers should use
pre-reading techniques appropriately and flexibly. Moreover, teachers
should take the students’ preferences for pre-reading techniques into
consideration. Here are some suggested pre-reading techniques which
hopefully can help to increase students’ interest and motivation.
a. Using visual aids
Visual aids are used to increase the effectiveness of classroom
teaching-learning process (Joshi, 1995). As a result, using visual aids
is considered to be one of the most efficient techniques used in
language teaching since it is a way to show the meaning of the words
visually through real objects, drawing, pictures, gestures and facial

expressions.
b. Using a brainstorming web
This technique is attached to group work activity. Each group must take
a brainstorming web and write the title of the article in the center. Then a
group leader must be appointed so as to complete the following duties: make
sure everyone speaks English only; make sure everyone in the groups
contributes; be the writer for the group in filling the brainstorming web
below:

18


In the circles, groups write everything they already know about the topic
and everything they think might be in the passage. They can add as many
circles as needed. Actually, a brainstorming web reminds the students of
what they have already known and gets their minds ready to take new
information as well. In other words, a brainstorming web can activate the
students’ schemata as well as stimulate their interests and curiosity.
c. Giving pre-reading questions
Pre-reading questions or guiding questions are comprehension questions
asked either orally or written on the board before the students read the text.
It is evident that these questions are necessary to students because “they give
the students a reason to read and to lead them to the main points of the text”
(Doff, 1988, p.61). Guiding questions, obviously, should be concerned with
the general meaning or with the most important point of a text and not focus
on minor details. More importantly, pre-reading questions should be fairly
easy to answer and not too long.
4.3.2 - Techniques for enriching vocabulary
Nowadays, it is widely accepted that vocabulary plays an important part
in language teaching and should be at the centre of language teaching. More

and more researchers have realized the importance of vocabulary acquisition
in second language teaching. According to McCarthy (1990), without words
a learner cannot communicate or read. David Wilkins (cited in Thornbury,
2002), when mentioning the shift of focus from grammar as the central
anchor of language teaching to the lexicon, emphasizes the importance of
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vocabulary acquisition as follows, “ without grammar very little can be
conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.”
The 12th-form students often find reading tasks are difficult and boring
because of their limitation of vocabulary. Some suggested techniques below
can be employed to solve this problem.
a. Encouraging students to have extensive reading habit
Familiarizing the students with extensive reading is a way to fuel their
enthusiasm for learning English.

By reading extensive materials, the

students can feel the joys of reading in other language. Moreover, it can help
students enrich their vocabulary, strengthen their understanding of language
and consolidate their grammar. In order to motivate the students to have
extensive reading habit, here below are some principles to keep in mind.
-

The reading material is easy enough.

-

There is a variety of reading materials on a wide range of topics.

-

Students can choose what they want to read.

b. Using word games
Word games should be used more frequently in class especially during
consolidation stage. Once they understand what they should do and see the
tasks are not as difficult as they think, they will enthusiastically get engaged
in the activities. In addition, if students are made to take part in word games
voluntarily, they will become more active and hard working; thus, their
vocabulary acquisition will be improved. Moreover, through such activities,
the interaction among students in the classroom can be promoted. Students
are brought closer to each other. That makes a better studying environment,
a very important factor that helps a lot in bringing good learning results.
c. Using word list
Using word list is also the effective way to revise vocabulary. In order
to help students become familiar with the new way of vocabulary learning,
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which encourage their autonomy, teachers should guide them how to make
their word lists. Students are asked to write their own record sheets, on which
they have to list each word they have selected along with its pronunciation,
part of speech, meaning, collocations and related forms. By letting students
choose their own words in each unit, they were given a big opportunity to
perform significant amount of autonomy to establish individual learning
goals and work towards them in a structured way. They not only chose their
own words but also decided which learning strategies are going to work most
effectively for them.

4.3.3 - Techniques for improving students’ background knowledge
Ask students to read, collect and synthesize information from various
sources for presentations, projects, group discussions etc.
Asking students to collect the information from various sources and
then select, summarize and synthesize it for a presentation, a group project
or a discussion is actually a variant of the previous task. It is a variation
because students still have the chance to practise reading in the real world
with certain freedom to choose the topic and the information that they are
particularly interested in. However, since the outcome of their reading will
be assessed via their performance in the presentation, project or group
discussion, more intensive reading becomes necessary in this reading task.
Therefore, this task could be said to well resemble the in-depth reading
activities in students’ real life, such as when they wish to learn from various
Internet sources about available scholarships or self-study a complicated
subject matter by reading different materials in English. The authenticity of
this task, however, is rather simulated since assessment is imposed on the
outcome of their reading.
As for classes with lower English competence, a simpler reading task
was suggested by one interviewee as an alternative. In stead of an oral
presentation which might be time consuming and over-challenging, the
students were asked to search for information and read as much as possible
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about a specific topic of their favourites. Then during a class contact, the
teacher would start by sharing with the whole class some information that
she had collected before asking her students for further supplementation.
Alternatively, teachers should subdivide a theme into several subtopics and
assign each of them to different groups in the class. Subsequently, each group
of students should read at home to discuss or exchange the information with

other groups in the following lesson.

5 - CONCLUSION
5.1 - Summary of the study
Reading is one of the receptive skills through which students can widen
their knowledge of the target language more effectively than the others. So
it is important for the students to have good techniques in reading to become
good readers.
In the case of this study, the researcher is aware of many factors that
affect students’ reading comprehension. Among these, there are four main
factors that should be taken into account for the 12th-form students: Students’
lack of background knowledge and world knowledge, students’ low
motivation, students’ limited vocabulary and grammatical structures and
their lack of appropriate reading strategies.
This study gives an analysis of the difficulties in reading and the sources
of these difficulties as perceived by the 12th form students specifically,
difficulties in vocabulary, reading strategies, and background knowledge and
knowledge of the world. The findings of the study indicate that the majority
of students prefer having supplementary reading texts. They want their
teachers to provide them with reading strategies to help them read efficiently.
Besides, it reveals that the teachers do not make full use of games and visual
aids to catch the interest of most the students.

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As an English teacher of Luong The Vinh High School, the researcher
has made a great effort to present some useful reading techniques which
hopefully can be employed to help the 12th form students improve their
reading comprehension.

5.2 - Limitations and recommendations for further study
Firstly, the researcher only uses survey questionnaires to collect data
on views of the 12th-form students about reading difficulties and their needs
in teaching and learning reading. The number of the students taking part in
the questionnaires is only from one classe (45 students), which may not be
sufficient for the researcher to have precise judgments.
Secondly, not all the suggested techniques for teaching and learning
reading are experimented properly, so the researcher can’t draw a conclusion
of the effectiveness. Therefore, the suggestions to improve reading
comprehension for 12th-form students at Luong The Vinh High School may
be subjective and uncompleted.
Finally, this study was carried out in Luong The Vinh High School, so
the mentioned teaching methods may not be suitable to apply to other high
schools because of learners’ differences in language proficiency and other
social constraints.
Though this is just a small-scale study on the issue, it really provides
some helpful suggestions for the teaching reading to the 12th-form students.
However, any further researches that employ supplementary instruments
such as experimental research or observations and carry out in a longer
period of time on a lager scale can help to prove the above results more
strongly and persuasively and can also help to avoid the subjective
assessments from the researcher of this study.

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