Luận văn The frequency of using reading activities - Nguyễn Thị Mỹ Hảo

DECLARATION I, Nguyen Thi My Hao, certify that this thesis is the result of my own research and the substance of this thesis has not, wholly or in part, been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution. Hanoi, May 2008 Nguyen Thi My Hao ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Mr. Le Van Canh, M.A for his invaluable comments and suggestions, generous assistance and continual encouragement in completion of this research. Secondly, my special thanks go to all the teachers and students of the classes I have visited in order to gather information for my survey questionnaire and classroom observations. My gratefulness is to my husband, who has given me so much love, patience and encouragement, who spent hours working with the computer to help me with computer entry and processing. In addition, I am in debt of my mother-in-law, who has constantly supported and encouraged me to carry out this thesis, who has shared with me all the housework so that I could concentrate on doing research. ABSTRACT Reading is a very important skill because together with listening, reading provide indispensable input for students. However, the teaching and learning reading in many schools in Viet nam in general and at Phan Boi Chau specialized school in particular is still far from satisfactory. Students’ satisfaction with the reading lessons is of great concern. In fact, there are many factors affecting the students’ satisfaction that are worth considering such as students’ interest, needs teachers’ activities, the topic of the text, the text type…This thesis only aims at investigating the students’ level of satisfaction with the teachers’ reading activities because reading activities play a key role in making students satisfy with their reading lessons. A set of survey questionnaire and classroom observations are used to explore the 11th non- English majors’ attitudes towards the teachers’ reading activities, situation of using reading activities by the teachers at Phan Boi Chau school and students’ preferences for these activities in order to narrow the gap between teaching styles and learning styles as a goal of learner-centredness in language education. From that, some recommendations from using reading activities to better the situation of teaching and learning reading at Phan Boi Chau school would be made. The findings from the study indicates that almost all the students are fully aware of the sheer importance of reading activities. A great variety of reading activities are reported to have been used during reading lessons. Among them, activities such as giving some pre-reading questions to think before reading, pre-teaching new vocabulary and structures, asking students to do tasks in limited time are found to be the most frequently used but not interesting ones. Using visual aids and games is rarely applied by the teachers despite the fact that they are in greatest favour by the students. The students also enjoy taking part in many other activities such as predicting, brainstorming and translating….Besides, the teachers’ characteristics also play an important role in motivating students to learn the lessons. The data from the classroom observations highlight the importance of using activities in encouraging and satisfying the students in reading lessons. Finally, the study recommends that to better the situation, the teachers should vary and apply reading activities flexibly and appropriately, focus on students’ personal factors, provide the students with a variety of extra tasks, material and activities and be helpful, enthusiastic and humorous as well. Hopefully, the thesis can be considered a small contribution to the teaching and learning reading at the school. TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii REFERENCES 42 APPENDIX 1. SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE I APPENDIX 2. OBSERVATIONAL PROTOCOLS III LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS TABLES Table 1: The frequency of using reading activities Table 2: Students’ preferences for the reading activities used by the teachers CHARTS Chart 1: The role of teachers’ reading activities in reading lessons. Chart 2: Factors affecting the students’ satisfaction with the reading lessons Chart 3: Activities that can help to increase the students’ satisfaction PART ACHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION I.1. Rationale of the study One of the tenets of a learner-centered approach to language teaching is student satisfaction. If it is true that we cannot teach the language to the students , but just create conditions for the learning to happen, it is crucial to make our students satisfied with their lessons. This is because students cannot be sufficiently motivated to learn without feeling satisfied with what they are provided for In teaching and learning English as a foreign language, reading has always received a great deal of attention. This is understandable because where English is learnt and taught inis a non-English environment, so reading is not only an important means to get knowledge but also a means of further study. According to Richard (1993:9), “Becoming an effective and fluent reader in another language has a number of important benefits for the learner”. In order to motivate learners to learn and become fluent readers, it is necessary for teachers to understand students’ degree of satisfaction with the way the reading skills are taught so that improvements can be made on the part of the teachers. Despite the need of understanding how students evaluate the lessons teachers teach, there has yet been a single study that looks into this matter in my school. When dealing with a reading lesson, the teachers always try to their best to make the reading lesson a success. However, because of the differences between the teachers and the students with regard to the experience in using the language and expectation as well as to cognitive styles, teachers’ satisfaction with their teaching does not necessarily mean students’ satisfaction. it seems that some of them are not satisfied with their learning. Actually, satisfaction is a very necessary element in learning in general and in learning reading in particular but helping students to be satisfied with their reading lessons is a challenging task. There are many factors that are worth considering such as students’ needs, interest, teachers’ reading activities, the topic of the text, the text type. As said above, the issue of students’ satifactionsatisfaction remains unexplored in my school, this study was an attempt to fill the gap. However, with the limitation of the time, the author only intends to pay more attention to investigate the students’ satisfaction with the teachers’ reading activities because reading activities play an important role in making students satisfy with their reading lessons. Suitable reading activities can enhance the students’ interest in reading. Needless to say, it is necessary for the teachers to know what reading activities their students would like to take part in. At Phan Boi Chau school, teachers have used a variety of reading activities in the classroom. Despite their great effort, the students are sometimes not satisfied with their reading lessons and the reading lessons are said to be boring. This issue has brought the author a desire to conduct a research study on how far the students are satisfied with their reading lessons and to give some suggestions for using and choosing suitable reading activities. I.2. Aims of the study The study aims at: - examining the 11th non-English majors’ attitudes towards the teachers’ reading activities. - investigating the current situation of using reading activities by teachers at Phan Boi Chau school. - exploring the students’ satisfaction with the teachers’ reading activities. - giving some recommendationssuggestions for teachers to employemploying reading activities to satisfy the students by satisfy non-English to improve their reading skills. I.3. Research questions - What are the 11th non-English majors’ attitudes towards the teachers’ reading activities? - What is the current situation of using reading comprehension activities at Phan Boi Chau school? - What reading comprehension activities do students most and least prefer? - To what extent are they satisfied with their reading comprehension lessons in general? I.4. Scope of the study As mentioned above, students’ satisfaction with their reading lessons depends on different factors such as students’ needs, interest, teachers’ reading activities, the topic of the text, the next type. All these factors can not be covered in this paper. So, the author only intends to study on reading activities that may affect students’ satisfaction in learning English in general and in reading comprehension in particular. More specifically, the author only focuses on investigating reading activities employed by teachers at Phan Boi Chau school and students’ preferences for these reading activities. After that, some suggestions are given for the teachers to improve their reading activities to satisfy their students. I.5. Methods of the study In order to achieve the goal of the study, which was to investigate the studnents’ degree of satisfaction with their reading comprehension lessons, a questionnaire survey was chosen for this study. In addition to the questionnaire, which was administered to the students, classroom observations were also made to help the researcher interpret the questionnaire data more accurately.The study was carried out on the basis of material collection, survey questionnaire and class observation. For the theoretical basic, materials are collected, gathered and analyzied carefully. For the practical basic, questionnaires and class observation are carried out with target teachers and students to collect the most reliable data for the thesis. I.6. Significance of the study The students’ satisfaction with their teachers’ reading activities plays a very important role to the reading lessons. This contributes to make the lesson successful or not. The findings of the study are believed to be useful for teachers to realize the essential role of reading activities to the students’ satisfaction with their reading lessons. More importantly, the recommendations for reading activities hopefully can help the teachers to satisfy their students in reading lessons. I.7. Design of the study The study consists of three five parts:chapters Part AChapter I: , Introduction,- presents the rationale, aims, research questions, scope, methods, significance and the design of the study. Chapter IIPart B: Development- consists of three chapters: Chapter I,:, Literature review, presents the learner-centred approach, the teaching and learning style, studies on learners’ satisfaction in language education reading and reading activities. Chapter III,:, The study, provides the setting of the study, subjects, instruments and data analysis process Chapter IV:, Data analysis and discussion, analyses and discusses the data collected from the survey questionnaire and classroom observations.. Chapter IIIV,:, Major findings and suggestionsrecommendations, offers the major findings and some suggestions recommendations for employing reading activities. Part CChapter VI:,: Conclusion,n- summarizes the study, presents and gives some limitations during the process of doing the research and gives some suggestions for further study. PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW 1II.1. Introduction Understanding students’ satisfaction with the way we teach is part of our endeavor to make our teaching more learner-centered. This chapter reviews the relevant literature. First, I will present some major principles of the learner-centered approach to language teaching. Then, the issue of the gap between teachers’ teaching styles and students’ learning styles is briefly discussed. This will be followed by the why and the how of narrowing such a gap. Finally, the definition of reading and some common reading activities will be presented. the issue of students’ statisfcationstudents’ satisfaction in language learning will be discussed. II.21. Learner- centred approach. Recently, there has been a shift in focus from the teacher to the learner, from exclusive focus on how to improve teaching to an inclusive concern for how individual learners go through their learning. There are two reasons for this shift. The first reason is that the goals of language learning as well as insights into language and into the process of language learning have changed. The second reason is that learner-centredness is not a theory about teaching, but rather a theory about learning. Each individual decides what is important and what is relevant to construct a meaningful concept. According to Nunan Nunan (20001988:11), learner-centred classrooms are the places where “key decisions about what will be taught, how it will be taught, when it will be taught, and how it will be accessed will be made with reference to the learner”. In fact, the concept “Learner- centred approach” is not a new one in the world. It rooted from the ancentancient times based on a lot of the famous educationalist’ points of view. This was then strongly developed and applied to language teaching. In Viet Nam, this viewpoint was also paid a lot of attentionlearner-centeredness has been encouraged and promoted for several years, especially in education and training a long time ago. In 1986, at the 6th congress of the Communist Party of Viet Nam, the policy of DOI MOI (Renovation) was adopted. New approaches to planning in all fields emerged, affecting all sectors of society. Education is just one of them. The view was presented clearly in Article 35 of the 1992 Constitution of Viet Nam as follows: “Education and Training is the priority national policy. The government develops education aiming at improving people’s knowledge, training human resources and fostering talents”. Therefore, it’s necessary of all educationalists to be aware of the important role in changing their attitude toward education in order to meet the demands of the renovation. The learner-centred approach is based on the principle that learning is totally determined by the learner. As teachers we can influence what we teach, but what learners learn is determined by the learners alone. According to Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Ngoc (year and page of reference?2002:40), learner-centred instruction includes: techniques that focus or account for learners’ needs, styles and aims techniques that give some control to learners (group work, strategy training for example) syllabus that include the consultation and input of learners and that do not presuppose objectives in advance techniques that enhance a learner’s sense of competence and self-worth techniques that allow for learner creativity and innovation It is clear that if the learner-centred approach is fully applied to any teaching and learning process, the learners will be more dynamic, more active and more self-confident. They not only have good opportunies to show their performance and competence, but they also have the ability to develop and create what they have learnt. In the teaching and learning foreign language, this approach brings a lot of advantages as Tudor (1993) suggests the following ones: The teaching aims may be suitably set if the learners can participate in building the subject syllabus based on their own experiences. The study will be more effective if the teaching method is suitable to learning method of the learners’ interest. The learners will be more effective if the learners feel involved in building their own syllabus. II.23. Teaching styles and lLearning styles: The need to narrow the gap between the teachers’ teaching styles and the students’ learning styles. II.23.1. Learning styles: The first step in pursuing more learner-centred teaching is to understand students’ learning styles so that every student can be well catered for. An area of research which has received a lot of attention in many areas of education is the issue of learning style. The idea of learning style comes from general psychology. It refers to the characteristic ways in which individuals orientate to problem-solving. Keefe (quoted in Ellis 1994:499) defines learning style as “the characteristic cognitive, affective and physiological behaviours that serve as relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with and respond to the learning environment…Learning style is a consistent way of functioning, that reflects underlying causes of behaviour” According to (the teachers’ Edition (November 2001)Richard and Lockhard (quoted in Record, D 2001:27)which author?), learning styles are defined as “predispositions to particular ways of approaching learning and are intimately related to personality types” (Richard and Lock hard). Another definition is: “A student’s orientation toward learning” (Numan). Mariani defines learning styles as “a learner’s overall approach to learning his or her typical consistent way of perceiving and responding to learning tasks”.(Mariani:, quoted in Record, D 2001:27). Although several learning style tests are available, each with lightly different categories, Richard and Lock hard (cited in Record, D 2001:27). classified the following learning styles:This is NOT the right way of citation!- quoted in Teacher’s Edition 2001) classified the following learning styles: Visual learners: These learners respond to new information in a visual fashion and prefer visual, pictorial, and graphic presentations of experiences. They benefit most from reading and learn well by seeing words in books, wordbooks, or on the blackboard. They can often learn on their own with a book, and they take note on lectures to remember new information. Auditory learners: These learners learn best from oral explanation and from hearing words spoken. They benefit from listening to tapes, teaching other students, and conversing with their classmates and teachers. Kinesthetic learners: Learners of this type learn best when they are physically involved in the experience. They remember new information when they actively participate in activities, field trips, and role-plays. Tactile learners: These learners learn best when engaged in “hand-on” activities. They like to manipulate materials and to build, fix, or make things, or to put things together Group learners: These learners prefer group interaction and class work with other students, and learn best when working with others. Group interaction helps them learn and understand new material better. Individual learners: Learners of this type prefer to work on their own. They are capable of learning new information by themselves, and they remember new material better if they have learned it alone. Understanding students’ learning styles is very necessary for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is important to learner-centred language acquisition because it helps English foreign language teachers prepare lessons based upon their students’ learning styles and to avoid the one-size-fits-all mentality. Secondly, As Paulus Brantner-Artenie, and Turton (wrong way of citation quoted in “Teacher’s Edition 2001”) stated “Mmaking students aware of their learning style preference increases student autonomy and motivation. Knowledge of their learning styles can help students to develop strategies, which will help strengthen their weaker perceptual styles. These strategies can be transferred to university classes where information is often presented through one modality” (Paulus Brantner-Artenie and Turton, quoted in Record, D 2001:29author, page, year?). In other words, if a student is able to gauge his/her own unique learning style, he/she will be able to seek out and make the most opportunities