VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

 NINH THỊ LAN ANH AN INVESTIGATION ON READING STRATEGY USE
AMONG NON ENGLISH SPECIALIZED STUDENTS AT
HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIFTED STUDENTS

Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng chiến lược đọc hiểu của học sinh
không chuyên Anh ở trường THPT Chuyên.

M.A. Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 60.14.10

HANOI- 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES


Figure 4 Major Aspects of Levels of Comprehension
Figure 5 Distribution of students‘ proficiency levels
Table 1 Use of Each Strategy Category
Table 2 Use of Global Strategies
Table 3 Use of Support Strategies
Table 4 Use of Problem Solving strategies
Table 5 Five Most Frequently Used Strategies
Table 6 Five Least Frequently Used Strategies
Table 7 Reading strategy use between more and less proficient students
Table 8 Five most frequently used strategies by more and less proficient
students
Table 9 Five Least Frequently Used Strategies by high and low proficient
students

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TABLE OF CONTENT
Declaration ……………………………………………………………………… .i
Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………… ii
Abstract………………………………………………………………………… iii
Lists of tables ………………………………………………………………………iv
Table of contents ……………………………………………………………………v
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale for the study………………………………………………………… 1
2. Aims of the study…………………………………………………………………2
3. The research questions………………………………………………………… 2
4. Significance of the study…………………………………………………………3
5. Scope of the study……………………………………………………………… 3
6. Method of the study………………………………………………………………3
7. Design of the study……………………………………………………………….3

PART III: CONCLUSION
1. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………41
2. Pedagogical Implications…………………………………………………… 41
3. Limitations and recommendations for further study……………………………43
REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………44
APPENDIX ………………………………………………………………………………I
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PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale for the study
In the context of global integration, English plays an important role in most fields in
both personal and professional life. The need for English as an international
language has put considerable pressure on the education system of many countries.
This is the same situation in Vietnam where learning English is not only the interest
but also the practical demand for many people, especially for those who always
have an intention of studying and working abroad. Therefore, English is now taught
as a compulsory subject to students at high schools in our country.
To have a good command of English, students are required to master four closely
related language skills, namely listening, speaking, writing, and reading. Among
four skills, reading is considered to be the most important because it does not only
provide students with knowledge but also help develop other language skills.
Reading is an important way of expanding the students‘ receptive knowledge of the
language and in terms of classroom activities, it is also an effective way of
stimulating students to talk and write. Anderson (2003) states that reading is the
most important skill to master in order to ensure success in learning and
strengthened reading skills facilitates greater progress in other areas of language
learning. That is to say, teaching and learning reading effectively is a central issue

proficiency and low proficiency students
3. The research questions
1. What reading strategies are used by non English specialized students at
Grade 10 at High School for Gifted Students?
2. Are there any differences between the reading strategies employed by high
proficiency and low proficiency students at grade 10 at High School for
Gifted Students?
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4. Significance of the study
This study is significant for some reasons. Firstly, for teachers who are teaching
reading to high school students, it revealed students‘ general awareness and
perceived use of reading strategies while reading academic materials. Secondly, the
study uncovered reading strategies used most commonly and least commonly by the
students. Finally, it may point out the differences in reading strategies between high
and low proficiency students. Thus, teachers can identify effective reading
strategies for their students and have proper ways to promote more reading strategy
instruction in class.
5. Scope of the study
Reading strategies are interrelated with many other factors including reading
comprehension, students‘ proficiency level, text types, etc In the scope of this
study, reading strategies are only investigated in relationship with student‘s
proficiency levels. In addition, the sample of the study was drawn from non English
major students at Grade 10 at High School for Gifted Students.
6. Method of the study
To achieve the aims mentioned above, data were collected through the survey
questionnaire and students‘ profile of proficiency levels.
The quantitative research method is used with the aim of obtaining information on
reading strategies used among students in general and between more proficient
students and less proficient students in particular.

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter briefly discusses the theoretical background related to the study.
Review of aspects of reading in foreign language relevant to the study will be
included in: reading comprehension, reading process, reading comprehension level,
and reading strategies. In addition, a brief overview on related studies will be
presented.
1.1. Definition of reading
Reading is a very personal activity which can be omnipresent in various forms. By
reading a lot, people can grasp what is happening all over the world and keep pace
with the humankind civilization. At the times of explosion of information, reading
plays a greater role in our lives. However, the ability to read is such a natural part of
human being that people find it impossible to give an exact definition of reading.
Different scholars define it in different ways.
According to Smith (1985: 102), ―reading is understanding the author’s thought‖.
It means that the readers ―read the author’s mind not the author’s words.” If the
readers only understand the words in isolation in the text without understanding the
author‘s mind, their reading is useless.
Rumelhart (1997) indicates that reading involves the reader, the text, and the
interaction between reader and text. It can be seen that the reader and the text are
two essential components of reading process; it is, however, the interaction between
them that composes actual reading. Sharing the same idea with Rumelhart,
Silberstein (1994: 12) states that ―reading is a complex cognitive process in which
reader and text interact to (re)create meaningful discourse‖. From these definitions,
it is apparent that reading is a process in which the reader interacts with the text to
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gain some kind of meaning. This meaning mainly depends on the reader who is the
cognitive subject of the text.
Goodman (1971: 135) claims that reading is ―psycholinguistics process by which
the reader, a language user, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has

importance of reading and demonstrated the reading purposes. As mentioned
earlier, there are a number of different reading purposes; therefore, recognizing the
reading purposes is one factor which can help the students succeed in their reading
tasks. For the present study, only reading academic texts has been considered.
Therefore, the main purpose of reading for this study is to read for getting the
information.
1.3. Reading process
Numerous efforts to define and explain the process of reading have done in various
research areas. These efforts have brought up different models and views of
reading, among which are: the bottom-up model (Gough, 1972), the top-down
model (Goodman, 1967) and the interactive model (Rumelhart, 1977) are most
frequently mentioned.
1.3.1. Bottom-up model
Bottom-up reading model emphasizes the written or printed text, and it indicates
that reading is compelled by text and that reading proceeds from part to whole.
Specifically, in bottom-up model, the reader begins with the written text (the
bottom), and constructs meaning from letters, words, phrases and sentences found
within, and then processes the text in a linear direction. In the process of meaning
interpretation, the language is translated from one form of symbolic representation
to another (Nunan, 1991). According to Eskey (2005), bottom-up processes are
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composed of a broad array of various complex skills, such as word recognition,
spelling, morpho-phonemic processing and morpho-syntactic parsing.
In this model, the reader seems to play a relatively passive role because the basis of
bottom – up processing is the linguistic knowledge of the reader. Samuel and Kamil
(1988) pointed out the shortcomings of these models as follows:
―Because of the lack of feedback loops in the early bottom – up models, it was
difficult to account for sentence – context effects and the role of prior knowledge of
text topic as facilitating variables in word recognition and comprehension.”

Apparently, top-down models have proved their pre-eminence compared with
bottom-up models as the reader – the centre of the reading process proves his active
role. However, these models still revealed certain shortcomings by some
researchers. The top-down model focuses on the assumption that good readers
bypass the letter sound correspondence when they read because they read so
quickly. That is, because good readers read at a faster speed, they do not depend
upon the phonemic code. However, recent evidence presented by Stanovich (1980)
discredits this assumption. He claims that instead of depending on meaning only,
good readers may well markedly attend to graphic information, especially when
they are uncertain about a word. Moreover, a purely top – down concept of the
reading process makes little sense for a reader who can be confused by a text
containing a large amount of unfamiliar vocabulary. Besides, in top-down models,
the generation of hypotheses would actually be more time- consuming than
decoding (Stanovich, 1980)
In short, both processes are regarded as equally important in L2 reading. The extent
to which top-down or bottom-up reading process is involved more or less in a
particular reading context depends on the nature of the reading text, the readers‘
reading purposes, their language proficiency, their attitudes toward reading, their
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interests in reading a particular text, and their available background knowledge
associated with the text they read (Koda, 2005).
1.3.3. Interactive model
As can be seen, both top-down and bottom-up models have revealed their
shortcomings, the interactive theories that were popularized by Rumelhart (1977)
were seen as a compromise between these two models. An interactive model is one
in which bottom-up processing combines top-down processing to cooperatively
determine the most likely interpretation of the input. Roughly speaking, processing
in an interactive model of reading proceeds in the following way: the reader begins
with a set of expectations about what information is likely to be available through

consequences associated with the act of reading are included.
These three dimensions define a phenomenon that occurs within a larger
sociocultural context (see Figure 1) that shapes and is shaped by the reader and that
interacts with each of the three elements. The identities and capacities of readers,
the texts that are available and valued, and the activities in which readers are
engaged with those texts are all influenced by, and in some cases determined by, the
sociocultural context. The sociocultural context mediates students‘ experiences, just
as students‘ experiences influence the context. Reader, text, and activity are also
interrelated in dynamic ways that vary across pre-reading, reading, and post-
reading.
12 Figure 1 —A Heuristic for Thinking About Reading Comprehension
1.4.2. Factors involved in reading comprehension
Gough and Tunmer (1986) proposed the simple view of reading, in which reading
comprehension is seen as the product of decoding and listening comprehension.
That is to say, the ability to decode words with the help of phonological awareness,
naming speed, orthographic awareness, phonics knowledge and listening
comprehension, specifically including verbal intelligence, vocabulary, prior
knowledge are absolutely essential for skilled reading
Two important factors beyond decoding and listening comprehension can be
mentioned: fluency and strategies. According to (Wolf & Bowers, 1999), fluency is
not an issue in listening as the speaker controls the pace, but it is needed for reading
comprehension because of working memory limitations. If word recognition is
slow, then previous words will have faded from working memory before later words
are recognized, and their joint meaning will not be able to be processed. Strategies
(Dole et al., 1991; National Reading Panel, 2000) are important in reading, and
more useful than in listening, because the text stays present and allows re-
inspections. Strategies are particularly useful when the text is long and/or complex,


+ Level 1: Literal comprehension
Literal comprehension is the lowest level and requires the reader to be able to tell
what the book says, it means that the reader concerns with information stated
explicitly in the text.
+ Level 2: Reorganization
At this level, readers have their ability to analyze, synthesize, and organize
information that has been stated explicitly in the text.
+ Level 3: Inferential comprehension
Readers can use information explicitly stated along with their own personal
experience as a basis for conjecture and hypothesis.
+ Level 4: Evaluation
Readers can give their judgments and decisions concerning value and worth.
+ Level 5: Appreciation
Appreciation
Evaluation

Inferential
Comprehension
Reorganization


Using information to
express opinions and
form new ideas
Reading the lines
Reading between
the lines
Reading beyond
the lines
Figure 4: Major Aspects of Levels of Comprehension
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The highest level- applied level is undoubtedly akin to the act of discovery. It
underscores the constructive nature of reading comprehension. Also, Standal &
Betza (1990: 80-83) share the same view with Vacca & Vacca (1989), they range
reading questions due to three comprehension levels: Literal level, Inferential level
and Higher-Than-Inferential Level. In general, all three views on reading
comprehension levels clearly reflect levels of readers‘ understanding.
1.5. Reading strategy
1.5.1. Definition and characteristics
Reading strategies are referred to as behaviors that a reader engages in at the time of
reading and that are related to some goals, or as the mental operations or processes
involved when a reader purposefully approaches a text to make sense of what he
reads (Cohen, 1990). However, while Cohen (1990) claims that reading strategies
are consciously applied, Barnett (1989) states that they could either be conscious
techniques controlled by the reader or unconscious processes applied automatically.
The term ‗reading skills‘ and ‗reading strategies‘ have confused scholars, teachers,
and students. Afflerbach et al. (2008) clarified the differences between these two
terms as follows: ―Reading strategies are deliberate, goal-directed attempts to
control and modify the reader’s efforts to decode text, understand words, and
construct meanings of text. Reading skills are automatic actions that result in

(Weinsten and Mayor, 1987; Alexander and Jetton, 2000). O‘Malley, Russo, and
Kupper (1985) assumed that metacognitive strategies involve thinking about the
learning process, planning for learning, monitoring of comprehension or production
while it is taking place, and self-evaluation of learning after the language activity is
completed. Cognitive strategies are more directly related to individual learning tasks
and entail direct manipulation or transformation of the learning materials. The
cognitive strategies include adjusting speed of reading, guessing the meaning of
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unknown words, skipping a word, rereading the text to improve comprehension, and
visualizing information in the text. However, Grabe (2009) recently claims that
there are no distinct metacognitive strategies as a counterpart of cognitive strategies.
Rather, readers use reading strategies with varying levels of metacognitive
awareness according to their reading goals or purposes. Finally, affective strategies
are the procedures that readers use to make the reading environment conducive
(Teoh, 1996). Weinstein and Mayer (1987), on the other hand, proposed that
affective strategies are strategies that readers use to focus attention, maintain
concentration, manage performance anxiety, establish and maintain motivation, and
manage time effectively. Normally these are done before reading so as to enable the
readers to ‗approach the reading tasks with ease and comfort‘.
Mokhtari and Sheorey‘s (2002) used another classification scheme to classify the
reading strategies. SORS classifies the reading strategies into three different types
of strategies: Global, Problem-solving, and Support strategies. Global Reading
Strategies (GLOB), which can be thought of as generalized or global reading
strategies aimed at setting the stage for the reading act (for instance, setting purpose
for reading, previewing text content, predicting what the text is about, etc.).
Problem-Solving Strategies (PROB), which are localized, focused problem-solving
or repair strategies used when problems develop in understanding textual
information (for instance, checking one‘s understanding upon encountering
conflicting information, re-reading for better understanding, etc.). Support Reading

about strategies; a reader must also be able to apply them strategically‖ (pp. 468-9).
Some researchers diverted their attention to the use of metacognitive strategies and
metacognitive awareness of L2 readers. Flavell defines metacognition as
―knowledge that takes as its object or regulates any aspect of any cognitive
endeavour‖ (as cited in Baker & Brown, 1984, p. 353). For Baker and Brown, this
definition covers two aspects; knowledge about cognition and regulation of
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cognition. Knowledge of cognition consists of the readers‘ knowledge about her or
his own cognitive resources, and the compatibility between the reader and the
reading situation. The researchers claimed that ‗metacognition‘ included checking
the outcome of any trial to solve problems, planning the next action, monitoring the
effectiveness of an action, and testing, revising, and evaluating one‘s strategies for
learning (Baker & Brown, 1984).
Carrell (1989) attempt to explore the metacognitive awareness of L2 readers about
their reading strategies and the impact of perceived reading strategy use on reading
comprehension in both first and second language. The participants were grouped
into two at different proficiency levels. Group one consisted of 45 native speakers
of Spanish whereas group two consisted of 75 native speakers of English. A
metacognitive questionnaire and reading texts were used to achieve the data. The
results revealed that for reading in the first language, local strategies or bottom- up
strategies tended to be negatively correlated with reading comprehension. For
reading in the second language, ‗global‘ or top-down strategies tended to be
positively correlated with reading comprehension Also, that local strategies tended
to correlate negatively with reading comprehension, perhaps because those with the
low proficiency may have been dependent on decoding skills.
Sheorey and Mokhtari (2001) examined differences in the reported use of reading
strategies of native and non-native English speakers when reading academic
materials. Participants were 150 native-English- speaking US and 152 ESL
students. The data on perceived reading strategy use was collected through