1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
POST- GRADUATE DEPARTMENT

DUONG THI LAN HUONG

A STUDY ON THE TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING READING SKILL
FOR NON-MAJOR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH
AT PRE-INTERMEDIATE LEVEL AT THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CENTER
AT THE MINNISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC THỦ THUẬT NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG ĐỌC
CHO CÁC HỌC VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH TRÌNH ĐỘ B
TẠI TRUNG TÂM NGOẠI NGỮ BỘ NÔNG NGHIỆP VÀ PTNT

MINOR MA THESIS
Field: English methodology
Code: 601410
HÀ NỘI-2013 2 Hanoi, September, 2013
Student
Duong Thi Lan Huong 4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Nguyen Quynh
Trang - PhD candidate, for her valuable guidance, encouragement and constant support
to the fulfillment of my thesis.
I also would like to thank my colleagues in the English Faculty of the College of
Management for Agriculture and Rural Development and non-major students of
English at pre-intermediate level at the Foreign Language Center at the Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development for their cooperation during the rearch.
Last but not least, I am indebted to my parents, whose constant love and care
greatly contributes to the completion of my study.

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ABSTRACT

English is becoming more and more popular in Vietnam and it has an important
role in the developing of economy, politics, culture, science, technology. In the
teaching and learning English, reading has always received great attention. Civil
servants at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development take reading into

2.7.1. Teachers’ role 12
2.7.2. Students’ role 13
2.7.3. The reading texts 13
2.7.4. Reading
motivation
13

2.8. Stages of a reading lesson 14
2.8.1. Pre-reading stage 14

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2.8.2. While-reading stage 14
2.8.3. Post-reading stage 15

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
3.1. Participants 16
3.2. Material 16
3.3. Data collection instrument 18
3.4. Data analysis 19
3.4.1. Data analysis of the students’ survey questionnaires 19
3.4.1.1. Students’ aims of learning English 19
3.4.1.2. Students’ attitude to the reading texts in the book More Reading Power 19
3.4.1.3. Students’ attention to the language aspects taught at MARD 20
3.4.1.4. Students’ attitude to the importance of reading comprehension 20
3.4.1.5. Students’ attitude to the benefit of reading 21
3.4.1.6. Students’ attitude to the activities in 3 stages of reading 21
3.4.1.6.1. Students’ attitude to pre-reading activities 21
3.4.1.6.1.1. The frequency of using Pre-reading activities by the teachers responded
by the students 21
3.4.1.6.1.2. Students’ enjoyment of pre-reading activities 22

4.1.2. Techniques for dealing with vocabulary 32
4.1.2.1. Techniques to deal with unknown words 32
4.1.2.2. Techniques to enrich vocabulary 33
4.1.2.2.1. Using word games 33
4.1.2.2.2. Using word lists 33
4.1.2.2.3. Encouraging students to have extensive reading habit 33
4.1.2.2.4. Students need to read a lot 33
4.1.2.2.5. The reading material is at an appropriate level 34
4.1.2.2.6. There is a variety of reading materials on a wide range of topics 34
4.1.2.2.7. Students are allowed to choose books that interest them 34
4.1.2.2.8. Reading is individual and silient 34

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4.1.2.2.9. Teachers advise students to find a regular time and place in the day
for reading so that it can become part of their daily routine 34
4.1.2.2.10. Reading speed is usually faster rather than slower 34
4.2. Conclusions 34
4.3. Limitations and recommendations for further study 35
REFERENCES
APPENDIX

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LIST OF TABLES
FOR STUDENTS

Table 1: Students’ aims of learning English
Table 2: Students’ attitude to the reading texts in the book More Reading Power
Table 3: Students’ attention to the language aspects taught at MARD
Table 4: Students’ attitude to the importance of reading comprehension
Table 5: Students’ attitude to the benefit of reading

English is the most widely spoken language in the world and it has
become more and more important in the development of science, technology,
politics, culture and international relations in Vietnam. The demand of teaching
and learning English is increasing throughout the country for different
purposes. In a second language classroom, reading plays a significant role in
building both linguistic and background knowledge for other language skills.
Hoang et al (2006:191) considers reading the most effective means of improving
students’ language competence. Carrell (1989) argues that “For many students,
reading is by far the most important of four skills in a second language”.
Anderson (1999) has the same opinion: “Reading is an essential skill for English
as a second/ foreign language student; and for many, reading is the most
important skill to master”. This is true for non-major students of English at
pre-intermediate level at the Foreign Language center at the Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). They are civil servants working
at different departments of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
and their job more or less concerns English. They learn English with the
enthusiastic help of the teachers coming from the College of Management for
Agriculture and Rural Development. However, most of them find effective
reading difficult. 5 major obstacles they confront in reading, as Hoang et al
(2005) specifies, are: the habits of word by word reading; overemphasis on
forms rather than meaning; excessive focus on details rather than main ideas;
poor vocabulary and limited background knowledge. Despite its importance, it
is urgent to conduct “A study on the techniques for improving reading skill for
non-major students of English at pre-intermediate level at the Foreign Language
Center at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development”.
1.2. Aims of the study

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The purpose of the thesis is to identify reading problems experienced by
teachers and learners at the Foreign Language Center at MARD so that some

Chapter 1 (Introduction) provides rationale, aims, significance, scope,
methods, and design of the study.
Chapter 2 (Literature review) conceptualizes the study’s theoretical
background, presents the concepts relevant to the topic of the thesis: definition
of reading and reading comprehension, classification of reading, reading
comprehension techniques, reading purpose of second language learners,
factors in teaching and learning reading, stages in a reading lesson.
Chapter 3 (Methodology) includes the participants, teaching material,
instrument of data collection, data collection and data analysis.
Chapter 4: (Suggestions and conclusions) consists of some suggested
techniques, a review of the study, the limitations of the study and
recommendation for further research. 15
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides a theoretical background to the study with
relevant concepts to the thesis as follows:
2.1. Definitions of reading
Reading is a natural part of human beings’ life, for example we read
books, magazines, newspapers, stories, notices, medicine leaflets. Reading has
been the subjects of research for over a century (Cheng, 1985). However, points
of view on the definition of reading are different.
In Ur’s definition, “Reading means reading and understanding” (Ur, P.
1996:138). Harmer J. (1989:153) considers reading as a mechanical process that
“eyes receives the message and the brain has to work out the significance of the
message”. Rubin, J. and Thompson, I. (1994: 91) defines reading in an other
way “Reading is an active information seeking process in which readers relate
information in the text to what they already know”. It can be understood that

features of what reading is. Each linguist’s definition reflects what reading
means from his own point of view. What they share is that they try to find out
the nature of reading, in which the reader, the text, and the interaction between
these 2 factors are emphasized.
2.2.Definition of reading comprehension
Reading comprehension plays a key role in teaching and learning a
foreign language in general and teaching reading in particular. Reading activity
is often considered a means of communication between the writer and the
reader.
According to Roe, Stood and Burns (1987:2),“Reading comprehension is
reconstruction, interpretation and evaluation of what author of written content
means by using knowledge gained from life experience”. Reading
comprehension can be affected by world knowledge, and those whose
knowledge about the reading topic is richer will understand the reading better.
Anderson and Pearson (1984:255) state that when readers make a critical
evaluation of the text, “they are making connections between the new
information on the printed page and their existing knowledge”. Lee and

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Vanpatten (1995:191) share the same view “Comprehension, by definition, is
the process of relating new or incoming information to information already
stored in memory. Readers make connections between the information on the
printed page and their existing knowledge. They must allow new information to
enter and become a part of their knowledge store”.
Richard and Thomas (1987:9) concentrate on the readers’ understanding
of the message basing on each individual’s background knowledge.They point
out that “Reading comprehension is best described as an understanding
between the the author and the reader. 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

However, Greenwood (1985) criticizes the overemphasis of teaching
pronunciation through reading aloud. According to him, students may unable
to focus adequately on the text’s meaning when they highly concentrate on
pronouncing the words. He implies 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, when reading aloud, students only focus on the
pronunciation not on the meaning of the text. Second, 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, it is often a waste of time
because students have to wait one after one when reading in turn. It can be
inferred that there is little value in reading aloud if we want to improve the
readers’ reading skills. Therefore, teachers 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 widely used in both real life and classrooms. Lewis
(1985: 110) states that silent reading is “the method we normally use with our
native language and on the whole quickest and most efficient”. Sharing the
same idea, Doff (1988:67) defines: “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”. It can be seen that silent reading is an effective skill for

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reading comprehension since we can best understand the reading material at
our own speed and we can go back to read again if there is something we don’t
understand clearly, and the most important is that it isn’t necessary to read
what we don’t want. When reading silently, we not only obtain the main ideas
in the shortest length of time but also deeply understand the details and can
answer the questions as well.
For teachers, silent reading is helpful for controlling the class because

point of information, for example, the relevant times on a timetable, items in a
directory, or key points in a academic text”. Grellet (1981:19) shares the same
view “When scanning, we only try to locate specific information and often we
do not even follow the linearity of the passage to do so”. So, scanning is very
high speed reading. When we scan, we often have a question our mind and we
read only the words that answer that question. Scanning is widely used in daily
life, such as scanning the lists of names in a telephone directory to find a phone
number, or scanning what we need in dictionaries, indexes, advertisements,
magazines, newspaper articles, labels, reference materials and so on.
It can be understood that skimming is a useful reading skill which is
often applied at the first stage of reading to give readers an overview of the
reading material. A reader skims through the text to see what it is about before
scanning for specific information he is looking for. Though these 2 reading
techniques are important for quick and efficient reading, they shouldn’t be
selected separately because a text can be best tackled by a combination of
strategies. Davies, F. (1995:137) argues that “It is difficult to draw clear
boundaries between the types of reading termed skimming and scanning; in
real life, scanning inevitably involves some skimming (and skipping) of large
sections of text, and skimming, reciprocally, must embrace some scanning”.
Intensive reading, in Nuttall’s (2000:38) opinion, “involves approaching
the text under the guidance of a teacher or a task which forces the students to
focus on the text”. Brown (1990:297) considers intensive reading “a classroom -
oriented activity in which students focus on the linguistic or semantic details of
a passage”. Grellet, F. (1981:4) states that “Intensive reading means reading

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short texts to extract specific information. This is an accuracy activity involving
reading for detailed.”
Extensive reading means to read widely and in quantity to obtain a
general understanding of a subject including reading longer texts for pleasure

store of knowledge to make guesses about meaning that is not explicitly stated,
so that they will be more willing to depart from literal interpretation when
reading.
- Understanding relations within sentences
- Linking sentences and ideas
2.5.2. Improving reading speed
Readers in most academic settings and many work situations face a large
quantity of reading in English. This can be a problem for many English
language learners who read so slowly that they often have little time to reflect
on and assimilate what they have read. Therefore, it is important for learners to
develop reading habits that will allow them to deal with a large amount of
reading. Furthermore, being able to read faster can make a big difference in
extensive reading. Simply, learners who can read faster can get through more
books in less time. In addition, they will also probably enjoy their reading more,
so they are liky to read more.
2.5.3. From skimming to scanning
- Predicting
One way to stimulate learners to reflect on what they are reading and to
use their imagination is to ask them to make predictions about the book when
they are part way through. Prediction is a key aspect of the reading process.
The more quickly and accurately learners can make prediction and confirm,
the more fluently they will read.
- Previewing
Previewing is a very useful skill that good readers often make use of and
we often preview in daily life, for example we preview:
 The newspaper by reading the headlines - to decide which articles to
read.

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 A letter by looking at the envelop - to decide whether to open it or throw

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- To act in a play, play a game, do a puzzle.
- To keep in touch with friends by correspondence or to understand business
letters.
- To know when or where something will take place or what is available.
- To know what is happening or has happened.
- For enjoyment or excitement.
(Rivers and Temperley, cited in Nunan, 1989:34)
2.7. Factors in teaching and learning reading
2.7.1. Teachers’ role
Nuttall (2000:32-33) considers teachers’ role, some of which are
choosing reading texts, designing tasks, facilitating reading process and
monitoring progress important. Teachers’ tasks consist of 6 major
principles, namely exploit students’ background knowledge; build a strong
vocabulary base; teach for comprehension; teaching reading strategies;
encourage students to transform strategies into skill; set criteria to select
reading texts (Anderson (2003) and Hedge (2000), cited in To et al. ,
2006:153-154).
2.7.2. Students’ role
Nuttall (2000:33) mentions several main roles for the students in a
reading lesson, such as:
-

Taking an active part in learning
-

Monitoring comprehension
-

Learning text talk

and Bycina, 1991 cited in To et al., 2006:158) (Hoang et al., 2005). Each
stage has its own aims and procedures.
2.8.1. Pre-reading stage
In this stage, teachers motivate students to read, activate or build
students’background knowledge of the subject. According to Williams
(1984:37), the purposes of the pre-reading stage are:
- To introduce and arouse interest in the topic.
- To motivate learners by giving a reason for reading.
- To provide some language preparation for the text.