iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
Table of contents iv
List of Abbreviations vii
List of figures, charts and tables viii
Part I. INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 2
3. Significance of the study 2
4. Research questions 3
5. Scope of the study 3
6. Methods of the study 3
7. Design of the study 4
Part II. DEVELOPMENT 5
Chapter I: LITERATURE REVIEW 5
1.1. Definition of reading comprehension in a Second Language 5
1.2. Intensive Reading and Extensive Reading 6
1.2.1. Intensive Reading 6
1.2.2. Extensive Reading 7
1.3 IELTS reading test 10
1.3.1. IELTS tests 10
1.3.2. IELTS reading module 11
1.3.2.1. IELTS reading tasks 11
1.3.2.2. IELTS reading skills 12
1.3.2.2.1. Scanning 13

4.2.1. Grouping and instructing 33
4.2.2. Preparations and Presentation procedures…………………………… 35
Part III. CONCLUSIONS 37
1. Conclusions 37 vi

2. Limitations of the study 37
3. Recommendation for further research 38
REFERENCES 39
APPENDICES I
Appendix 1: The pretest I
Appendix 2: The post test………………………………………………………………… VIII
Appendix 3: Answer to the pretest and Answer to the posttest………………… …… XIV
Appendix 4: The students’ results in the pre-test, post – test and gain….………………….XV
Appendix 5: The post- program questionnaire………………………………………… XVI
Appendix 5: Sample Reading………………………………………………………… …XVII
Appendix 6: Sample
Report… ……………………………………………………… XVIII
Appendix 7: Sample Reflection………………………………………………… ……… XIX

p: Probability
viii LIST OF TABLES

Tables:
Table 1: Question types and reading skills in the pretest and posttest
Table 2: Topics for The extensive reading program
Table 3: An overview of the extensive reading program for third year English majors at
HaUI
Table 4: Descriptive statistics for the pre-test and post-test scores of experimental and
control groups.
Table 5: Mean gains of experimental and control groups.
Table 6: Experimental students’ difficulties in reading IELTS reading texts
Table 7: Experimental students’ attitudes to extensive reading in the pre-IELTS course
Table 8: Students’ suggestions for the extensive reading in pre-IELTS course


which reading tests are included, has been utilized to assess the achievement by the

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students. As can be seen, in the IELTS tests the materials are extracted from articles in
magazines or books. Nonetheless, reading an English magazines or newspaper or seeking
an article for home reading is apparently strange and irregular to them, regrettably even the
third year students. Moreover, many of them are really passive in their learning process
proven by the fact that they only focus on trying to understand texts in the given book. For
some lessons, majority of the students are not (well)-prepared of what appears in the text
book, which certainly lay great difficulties and psychological pressure on the teachers to
lecture while the only reason is their lack of interests and motivation and of course their
chronic laziness. Consequently, a question raised here is what we should do now to inspire
in students the interests and motivation and innovative involvement and to demand greater
student responsibility in active reading to develop their reading proficiency and to prepare
for their IELTS reading tests. On the basis of those evidences, we have come up with an
idea that IELTS reading tasks as an extensive reading activities in class should be
introduced to students with the aim to arousing their active attitudes towards reading as
reading as well as bettering their ability when dealing with the skill in the IELTS tests.
2. Aims of the study
The study gears its objectives to:
 Assist students be more open-minded and get used to a variety of social fields (such
as, transportation, environment, crimes, etc) via a wide range of reading texts (for
example, magazine articles etc )
 Orient, guide and develop in the students the methods and the skills of searching
extensive reading sources, especially IELTS materials outside class.
 Examine the effect of the extensive reading program on the students‟ reading
proficiency.

3. Significance of the study
The study is likely to lay foundation for experimental research on extensive reading

As well, a questionnaire has been designed to perceive the surveyed students‟
opinion‟s on difficulties they have to face, their attitudes towards extensive reading in the
pre-IELTS course and their suggestions for more effective extensive reading in pre-IELTS
course.

7. Design of the study
The study consists of three parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion as
follows:

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Part I (Introduction) shows an overview of the study in which the rationale for the
research, the aims of the study, the significance of the study, the research questions, the
scope of the study, the methods of the study as well as the design of the study were briefly
presented.
Part II (Development) includes four chapters. Chapter one deals with literature
review relevant to the study including theoretical notions of reading and extensive reading.
This chapter serves as the basic foundations for the study. Chapter two presents the
methodological framework for the study. It covers the rationale for using experimental
method, instruments, and participants, procedures which includes pre-testing, post-testing,
and the extensive reading program. Chapter three, which is the most important chapter of
the study, presents major findings. Chapter four presents discussions and some
recommendations on the application of the extensive reading program.
Part III (Conclusion) comes up with the summary of the study, conclusions drawn
from the results of the study, some limitation of the study, and suggestions for further
study.
newspaper to find pieces of news which are interesting to them.
A close examination at more definition below reveals various points of view on
reading comprehension.
“Reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game. It involves an interaction between
thought and language. Efficient reading does not result from precise perception and
identification of all elements, but from skill in selecting the fewest, most productive cues
necessary to produce guesses which are right the first time. The ability to anticipate that

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which has not been seen, of course, is vital in reading, just as the ability to anticipate what
has not yet been heard is vital in listening.” Goodman, K.S. (1967)
As far as we are concerned, reading involves many complex skills in order for the
reader to succeed in understanding the text. For example, proficient readers recognize the
purpose for reading, approach the reading with that purpose in mind, use strategies that
have proven successful to them in the past when reading similar texts for similar purposes,
monitor their comprehension of the text in light of the purpose for reading, and if needed
adjust their strategy use. Proficient readers know when unknown words will interfere with
achieving their purpose for reading, and when they will not. When unknown words arise
and their meaning is needed for comprehension, proficient readers have a number of word
attack strategies available to them that will allow them to decipher the meaning of the
words to the extent that they are needed to achieve the purpose for reading. Reading is also
a complex process in that proficient readers give to the text as much as they take. They
make meaning from the text by using their own prior knowledge and experiences.
Proficient readers are constantly making predictions while reading. They are continuously
anticipating what will come next. Their prior knowledge and experiences with texts as well
as with the world around them allow them to do this. It is this continuous interaction with
the text that allows readers to make sense of what they are reading.

1.2. Intensive Reading and Extensive Reading
1.2.1. Intensive Reading

1.2.2. Extensive Reading
Extensive reading is generally associated with reading large amounts with the aim of
getting an overall understanding of the material. According to Richards and Schmidt
(2002: 193), "extensive reading means reading in quantity and in order to gain a general
understanding of what is read." This definition implies that readers are more concerned
with the meaning of the text than the meaning of individual words or sentences. To put it
simply, Extensive Reading involves the reading of large amounts of longer, easy material,
usually done outside the classroom and at each student‟s own pace and level. Because the
aim is for overall understanding rather than detailed analysis, there are few, if any, follow-
up exercises and tasks. For the same reason, there is minimum use of dictionaries. Above
all, the reading should be enjoyable, which is one reason why students should choose their
own material as far as possible. Extensive reading, as partly mentioned above, "is intended
to develop good reading habits, to build up knowledge of vocabulary and structure, and to
encourage a liking for reading" (Richards and Schmidt, 2002: 193-194).

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Clearly, the precise nature of extensive reading will vary with students motivation
and institutional resources, but an ideal characterization might include the following (from
Day &Bamford (1998, p. 7-8):
1. A variety of materials on a wide range of topics is available so as to encourage
reading for different reasons and in different ways.
2. Students select what they want to read and have the freedom to stop reading
material that fails to interest them.
3. The purposes of reading are usually related to pleasure, information and general
understanding. The purposes are determined by the nature of the material and the
interests of the student.
4. Reading is its own reward. There are few or no follow-up exercises after reading.
5. Reading materials are well within the linguistic competence of the students in
terms of vocabulary and grammar. Dictionaries are rarely used while reading
because the constant stopping to look up words makes fluent reading difficult.

more successful and longer lasting than conscious learning. In particular, through
experiencing language in context, ER is a very effective way of reinforcing, confirming
and deepening knowledge of vocabulary, expressions and structures, and of developing an
implicit understanding of when and how words are used (see Nation, 1997, and Coady,
1997, cited in Mutoh, Bamford and Helgesen 1998). In addition, as each student chooses a
book within their own capability range, weaker students need not feel embarrassed about
not keeping up with more advanced ones, as can happen with a class reader that all
students have to follow. Students are therefore less likely to get frustrated and demotivated,
so the overall effect on their attitude will be beneficial. Motivation is thus stimulated by
combining the pleasure of “a good read” (something most people can relate to), with the
satisfaction of accomplishing a meaningful task in the target language, while still at a
relatively low level of fluency. Furthermore, by choosing the books themselves, students
can follow their own interests, thus reducing teacher control and encouraging learning to
occur outside class. It is also a widely held belief among supporters of ER that, by
eliminating follow-up testing and exhorting students to aim for general understanding
rather than detailed comprehension, they gradually learn to read without word-by-word
decoding at the sentence level, though this is by no means an easy transformation for all
students, having learned to read by painstaking decoding. Carrell (1998) states that the goal
is to turn “learning to read into reading to learn.” More research into exactly how this
happens would be useful. Day and Bamford (interviewed by Donnes, 1999) offer this

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simple summary of the theory behind extensive reading: “Students who read large
quantities of easy, interesting material will become better readers and will enjoy the
experience.” In other words, “students learn to read by reading.”
Research into the effect of extensive reading on second language acquisition
A considerable amount of research has been undertaken to examine whether
extensive reading has beneficial results. Gains in various aspects of learners' abilities, such
as general linguistic proficiency, reading, writing, vocabulary, and spelling, have been
investigated (e.g., Cho and Krashen, 1994; Elley and Mangubhai, 1983; Grabe and Stoller,

for IELTS in private coaching and training centers are mostly students and they prepare
and sit generally for the academic module and not for the general module. The British
Council administers over 500,000 examinations overseas on behalf of British Examination
Boards. IELTS has four modules: listening module, speaking module, reading module and
writing module. Students often find the reading section of IELTS a challenging task.
.
1.3.2. IELTS reading module
1.3.2.1. IELTS reading task
The aim of reading is comprehension. Reading is defined in The Oxford Companion
to the English Language as “The process of extracting meaning from written or printed
language…” (Ed. McArthur,Tom,1992:847)
The meaning of a text does not rest in the reader, nor does it rest in the text. The
reader‟s background knowledge integrates with the text to create the meaning. According
to Anderson, N. (2003), the text, the reader, fluency and strategies combined together
define the act of reading.
The students in the Reading test gets only 60 minutes to read, comprehend the
articles and answer the accompanying questions. There are three reading passages, which
may include pictures, graphs, tables or diagrams. The reading passages are of different
length, from approximately 500 to 1000 words. The total for the three passages is between
1500 and 2500 words. Each reading passage has several questions of different types, which
may be printed either before or after the passage.
The three texts are placed in a sequence of heightened difficulty from passages 1
through 3. A candidate may have to answer any of the following question types:
Multiple choice questions, gap-filling exercises, matching paragraph headings with
paragraphs in the reading passage, short answers to open questions, Yes/No/Not given
statements and the completion of-sentences-summaries, diagrams, tables, flow charts,
notes. (McCarter, Easton and Ash, 2003:26)

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The Reading Module in the test contains a combination of some of the listed types,


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contextual clues, understanding syntax and recognizing and interpreting cohesive devices.
Nuttal (1996:48-120)
Besides, William (1984:79) points out seven reading skills as follows:
Deducting the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items, recognizing indicators in
discourse, extracting salient points to summarize, using basic reference skills, skimming to
get general information, scanning to locate specifically required information and
transferring information to diagrammatical display.
However, according to Wallace (1993), reading skills are ways of reading which
should be employed flexibly and selectively, depending on the text-type, and the context
and purpose of reading.
In IELTS reading module, it is obvious that 60 minute time does not allow and
require candidates to read every single word and understand thoroughly all three passages
of about 1500-2500 words. Instead, the test is designed to measure their abilities to employ
reading skills to answer given question items. Therefore, it is vital for them to use reading
skills to survive the reading test. Below are three main reading skills that IELTS experts
suggest using to survive the test: Scanning, skimming, and making inferences.
1.3.2.2.1. Scanning
When students face a new text they tend to read word by word. This way of reading
affects the general understanding of the passage and the time taken to finish the reading
can be too long for the final results. The students can end up reading every word very well
but in the long run the idea of what they have read is lost. To avoid this loss of time and
effort a reader can use Scanning to help him or her. Scanning consists on running your
eyes down the text, searching for important or key words, as well as the most outstanding
facts. Scanning can be a preliminary step in reading because with it you can locate new
terms, look them up in a dictionary or a glossary and save time when you actually begin to
read. The process of Scanning cannot take more than a couple of minutes. After that
decision over which terms are the most important and which part of the reading deserves
more attention should be made. Also, it is important to note that this is only a

* If the word ends in ly and is located after a verb it is likely that it is an adverb.
* If the word is before a noun and is not pluralized it can be an adjective.
* If the word is after a personal pronoun or a noun it might be a verb.
* If the word has a definite or indefinite article or it is pluralized it is possible to be a noun.

1.4 Extensive Reading and IELTS reading test
Just understanding each word of what is written may not be sufficient. Kaplan
(1966) has claimed that –Each language and each culture has a paragraph order unique to

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itself, and … part of the learning of a particular language is the mastery of its logical
system. (Kaplan, 1966 : 12)
It is generally assumed by students that they need to understand all the sentences and
paragraphs. However, we can, in fact often understand a text adequately without grasping
every part of it. This is generally known as extensive reading. Students have to be
encouraged to develop this skill. This is one of the major differences between a general
English course and a course in IELTS. In English courses, we concentrate on intensive
reading. The aim is to arrive at an understanding, not only of what the text means but of
how the meaning is produced. Most of the teachers interviewed suggested that extensive
reading should be in conjunction with the training courses for IELTS. It familiarizes the
students with all the aspects of the language at the same time. According to Nuttall (1989)-
An Extensive reading program is the single most effective way of improving vocabulary. It
is relatively easy to organize, enjoyable for the students and extremely cost-effective. (
Nuttall, 1989 : 12). Moreover, IELTS reading Tests often includes a variety of social
issues. Extensive reading that involves the reading of large amounts of longer, easy
material helps students familiar with topics and enhance their background knowledge.
Candidates sometimes find the idea strange that some parts of a text may be ignored
or skipped, but efficient reading, and specially the techniques of scanning and skimming,
requires it.
The term „scanning‟ is used here to mean glancing rapidly through a text either to

comprehension, both of which are necessary for reading proficiency. Students do not
become proficient readers unless both components are fully developed. In other words,
readers who cannot decipher the words on a page in a fluent and accurate manner will
struggle to comprehend the meaning of the text. On the other hand, without proficient
language comprehension skills, even readers who recognize the words may not necessarily
understand their meaning. Word recognition skills are intrinsic to reading, reflecting the
need to decipher print, whereas language comprehension pervades all areas of literacy.
Reading comprehension skills can be taught (Adams et al. 1997), but word recognition
skills are essential for the student to become proficient. Hence, in the simple view, reading
proficiency is the product of word recognition and language comprehension skills; some of
the controversy among reading professionals is not whether both sets of skills must be
mastered but how students master these skills and how explicitly these skills must be
taught.

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CHAPTER II – METHODOLOGY

2.1. Rationale for using experimental method
The research method plays such an important role in conducting a study that it
determines the reliability and validity of the study.
As mentioned earlier, this study is an attempt to test the effect of an extensive
reading program on an IELTS reading proficiency, and to investigate the cause-and-effect
relationship between them. Therefore, an experimental research method is the most
suitable and justified in the way that this method can be used not only to uncover
relationships between variables but also to establish a causal relationship between them.
It is by virtue of the experimental method itself, which allows for the control of
potential sources of differences (or variance), that the following can be said: One

gender is not worth mentioning.
2.4. Pretest and Posttest
The pretest and posttest used in this study were those taken from IELTS Practice
Test Books by Cambridge University Press. The pretest and posttest which were modified
from different IELTS reading tests have the same level of difficulty so that the researcher
can measure exactly the difference that may have been caused by the treatment. The tests,
modified from reading tests in the e-book IELTS help now, therefore, follow the format of
IELTS reading paper. There were a variety of tasks including multiple choice tasks, short
answer questions, note or sentence completion tasks, completing a table or summary,
labeling a diagram, classification and matching tasks. In detail, both the pretest and posttest
included 3 passages of about 800 words for each .

Table 1:Question types and reading skills test in the pretest and posttest
Question type
Example of direction used
Reading skills
tested
1. Multiple choice
questions
Use the information in the text to match the
statements (1 – 8) with the animals (A – D).
Write the appropriate letter (A – D) in boxes
1 – 8 on your answer sheet. Write:
A if the statement refers to cheetahs at the
Breeding Centre.
B if the statement refers to leopards at the
Breeding Centre.
C if the statement refers to both cheetahs and
leopards at the Breeding Centre.
D If the statement refers to neither cheetahs

with paragraphs in
the reading passage

The reading passage on Insomnia has 7
paragraphs (A – G).
From the list of headings below choose the
most suitable headings for paragraphs B – G.
Write the appropriate number (i – xi) in boxes
14 – 19 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs,
so you will not use them all.

Skimming for
general ideas
Making inferences
4.Yes/No/Not
given statements

Do the following statements agree with the
views of the writer of the reading passage on
Insomnia?
In Boxes 20 - 27 write:
YES if the statement agrees with the writer
NO if the statement doesn’t agree with the
writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the
writer thinks about this

Recognizing
opinions and

Topic
1
Health/ Food and Diet
2
Environment
3
Culture and language
4
Arts, music and entertainment
5
Science
6
Education
7
Mass Media
8
Technology
9
Transportation
10
Crime and law

These 10 topics were equivalent with 10 reading passages in the course book.
Every week, students were asked to search reading materials related to the topic of
the week regardless the source, the length and the types of the materials. Preferably, the
length of the reading text would be ranged from 400 words to 1500 words. To promote the
nature of extensive reading, students were allowed to find any types of text, depending on
their personal preferences. Thus, reading materials found by students would be short
stories, extracts from novels, plays, articles, pieces of news, etc from numerous sources
such as the Internet, books in the university library, newspapers, and magazines. Some