6
TABLE OF CONTENT
page
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
1
1. Rationale for the study
1
2. Aims of the study
2
3. Significance of the study
2
4. Scope of the study
2
5. Method of the study
3
6. Organization of the study
3
PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT
4
CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW
4
1.1. Reading and Reading Comprehension
4
1.2. Reading process
5
1.3. Context and the role of Context
7
1.4. Schema Theory
9
1.5. Reading Comprehension Levels

32

7
2.6.4. Reading for specific information
34
PART THREE: CONCLUSION
36
3.1. Major findings
36
3.2. Implications
37
3.3. Limitations for the study
37
3.4. Suggestions for further study
38
References
39
Appendices

Appendix 1: Sample of test 1
Appendix 2: Keys of test 1
Appendix 3: Sample of test 2
Appendix 4: Keys of test 2
Appendix 5: Results of making inferences
Appendix 6: Results of finding the main ideas
Appendix 7: Results of guessing vocabulary from context
Appendix 8: Results of reading for specific information

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PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale for the study
At present, Vietnamese people consider English to be an important foreign language,
and thus, a great number of students study it. In the context of global integration in the world,
in general, and in Viet Nam in particular, the demand for learning English gets stronger and
stronger. English is regarded as an indispensable tool for academic and career advancement.
It can’t be denied, therefore, that English is now the dominant language, especially in
language teaching programs in many schools.
In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Viet Nam, reading seems to
be the most important and useful activity in language classes. Of the four language skills,
reading has always received a great deal of attention, which is emphasized by Carrell (1981:
1) that “For many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills in a
second language, particularly in English as a second or foreign language”. It is quite true in
the case of Hatay Community College (HTCC) context, where English has been the foreign
language dominating in the teaching and learning programs for 33 years. Also, in the same
picture, reading is the most important skill for students to master because reading texts exist
new words and grammar, which are main parts in their test papers.
Reading is an active process and the readers need to use reading skills to make them

of English at HTCC encountered.
It is hoped that the findings from this study will be of some benefits to both teachers and
students at HTCC.

3. Significance of the study
This study is significant for some reasons. Firstly, the study uncovers challenges to
reading sub- skills the students had to suffer. Secondly, this study would help teachers and
students realize a need to change current English teaching and learning method. Finally, it
would enable students to improve their reading skills significantly in order that they can
obtain their better reading comprehension.

4. Scope of the study
Dealing with challenges of all reading sub-skills is too broad for a study of this size.
Therefore, the study is only designed to examine such sub – skills of reading comprehension
as reading for specific information, finding the main ideas, guessing vocabulary from the
context and making inferences that the first year non – major students of English at HTCC
are encountered with in reading comprehension. 12

5. Method of the study
With the aim of finding out challenges to some reading sub-skills, quantitative method is
used in this study. Two tests are instruments to collect the needed data.

6. Organization of the study
This minor thesis is organized into three parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion
Part one: Introduction: presents the rationale for the study, the aims, the method, significance,
the scope of the study as well as the organization of the thesis.
Part two: Development: consists of two chapters

the readers shouldn’t understand the word in isolation.
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 been encoded by a
writer as a graphic display”. Goodman thought that this act of reconstruction is viewed as “a
cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing and confirming.”
William (1986: 3) shares the same view on reading, especially on the act of reconstruction as
Goodman. He argues that “written texts, then, often contain more than we need to
understand them. The efficient reader makes use of this to take what he needs, and no more,
to obtain meaning.”
Harmer (1989: 153) views reading from a different perspective. He considers reading a
mechanical process that “eyes receive the message and the brain has to work out the
significance of the message”. It means that he focuses on two actions that dominated by the
eyes and the brain of the process.

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Definitions of reading are numerous, none can certainly captain all the ideas and feature of
what reading is because the act of reading is not completely understood nor easily described.
However, all the definitions above reveal their common feature, that is the nature of reading.
In the most general terms we may say that reading involves the reader, the text, and the
interaction between the reader and the text.
Reading doesn’t mean to pronounce words in the text but to understand what the author’s
thought. Therefore, the purpose of the act “reading” is to gain reading comprehension which
can be understood as the ability to get the required information from the text as efficiently as
possible. According to Grellet (1981: 3), he considers reading comprehension or
“understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently
as possible”. Swam (1975: 1) also shares “a student is good at comprehension” if “he can
read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information of a text with the
maximum of understanding”. In the same view, Richard and Thomas (1987: 9) points out
“reading comprehension is best described as an understanding between the author and the
reader”.

prior knowledge of text topic as facilitating variables in word recognition and
comprehension”.
The second model is top-down models, in which the reading process moves from the top, the
higher level of mental stages down to the text itself. Top-down models assume that the
reader is singularly important and processed text by first hypothesizing about the content of
the text and then selectively sampling the text to confirm or refute her hypothesis. In other
words, the reading process begins with the highest-level unit possible meaning in the mind
of the reader- and deals with lower-level units. The schematization of this approach is
provided by Cambourne (1979: 41)
Past experience, language
intuitions, and
expectations

Selective
aspects of print

Meaning

Sound,
pronunciation if
necessary

Figure 1. Schematization of the Top-down Approach

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This approach emphasizes the interaction between the reader and the text. The reader proves
his/ her active role in the reading process by bringing to the interaction his/ her available
knowledge of the subject, expectations about how language works, motivation, interest and
attitudes towards the content of the text.
Apparently, the strong points of top-down models outnumber those of the bottom- up as the

language), other knowledge (knowledge of other languages and world knowledge), and
context (linguistic and physical aspects of a text which provide clues to meaning). From this
view, context is clearly not an absolute presence in a text, but is created by the reader, and is
therefore influenced by the reader’s linguistic and world knowledge.
According to Nguyen Hoa (2000: 39), he seems to agree with some scholars that “context
seems just to be the minimal stretch of language that helps to understand what is written or
spoken”. This view is understood in a narrow sense, that context as co-text because context
consists of context of situation, extra-linguistic factor or physical environment, and co-text is
regarded as linguistic factors or linguistic environment in which an expression is used.
However, Nguyen Hoa (2000: 40) refers that Halliday understood the term of context in a
broad sense. He developed the concept of context in terms of field, tenor and mode of
discourse. Field of discourse refers to the subject of discourse, which is what the speaker
talks. Tenor of discourse regards the interpersonal relations between the participants. And
mode of discourse is concerned with the channels of the ways by which discourse is
conducted.
In fact, context has been shown to play a role in the identification of words in text. Studies of
context effects have established, among other things, that words are recognized better in
context than out of context, and that simple word association enhances word recognition.
Context, at a basic level, can be seen as information and in turn, information is that which
reduces uncertainty. In reading, context can be defined as information that reduces
uncertainty about the elements of a text, their meanings, and the meaning of a text as a whole.
Traditionally, context and meaning were seen as a given, existing fully and completely in
any properly written text, and the key to using it was linguistic knowledge. This view is
claimed by cognitive theorists to place too much emphasis on linear, bottom-up process.
Today, different definitions of context include language knowledge and emphasize the role

18
played by high-level knowledge sources and personal experiences. It is important to
distinguish between two types of context such as local context and global context. Local
context is provided by intrasentential information while global context is given by

schemata to interpret what the message is conveyed in the text. Adam and Bruce (1982) give
an emphasis on the role of schemata, they express “without prior knowledge, a complex
object such as a text is not just difficult to interpret; strictly speaking, it is meaningless”.
1.5. Reading Comprehension Levels
Reading is a thoughtful process, it embraces the idea of levels of comprehension. Different
readers can respond to text at different reading comprehension levels because their ability to
get the information from the text and their prior knowledge are not similar. With relation to
levels of reading comprehension, language specialists don’t measure reading comprehension
in the same way. Barrett (1968) gives five reading comprehension levels which were cited
by Jack Richards in Reading in a Foreign Language, Alderson & Urquhart, Longman, 1984.
The Barrett taxonomy dealt with reading and listening as well. It is a good guide to the levels
at which we are trying to measure comprehension. Five reading comprehension levels are
illustrated as follow

+ 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.
The skills needed for this level of comprehension include the following:
Literal Comprehension
Reorganization


basis for conjecture and hypothesis. When a reader gains comprehension at this level, (s)he
can have ability of:
3.1 Inferring supporting details (suggesting additional facts that might have made the
selection more informative, interesting or appealing)
3.2 Inferring main ideas (providing the main idea when it is not stated explicitly)
3.3 Inferring sequence (conjecturing about what might have happened or will happen
when no explicit statements are included in the text)
3.4 Inferring comparisons
3.5 Inferring cause and effect relationships (inferring the author's intentions,
motivations, or characters)

21
3.6 Inferring character traits (hypothesizing characteristics of persons)
3.7 Predicting outcomes (predicting what will happen as a result of reading part of
the text.
3.8 Interpreting figurative language (inferring literal meanings from the figurative
use of language).

+ Level 4: Evaluation
Readers can give their judgments and decisions concerning value and worth.
4.1 Judgments of reality or fantasy (judging whether an event is possible)
4.2 Judgments of fact or opinion (distinguishing between supported and unsupported
data)
4.3 Judgments of adequacy and validity (judging whether information in a text agrees
with other sources of information)
4.4 Judgments of appropriateness (determining relative adequacy of different parts of
a selection in answering specific questions).
4.5 Judgments of worth, desirability, and acceptability (decisions of good, bad, right
and wrong)


Levels of Comprehension
Literal
Interpretive
Applied
Getting the
information
gist
Integrating
information and
making inferences
Using information
to express opinions
and form new ideas
Reading the lines
Reading between
the lines
Reading beyond
the lines
Figure 3: Major Aspects of Levels of Comprehension

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the taxonomy is divided into five small levels, each level includes reading sub-skills, which
makes the investigator easy to measure students’ reading comprehension.
1.6. Reading Comprehension Skills
There have been numerous attempts to list the skills in reading comprehension. According to
Karlin, R and Karlin, A.R. (1988: 43-44), they make a list of skills which are categorized
into five groups:
+ Word recognition skills:
1. use of contextual clues: Context is associated with meaning, and it is meaning, as
well as visual elements, that aids readers in recognizing words or identifying

important. It consists of recognizing subjects, recognizing topics, recognizing
main ideas, key sentences, noting important details.
3. organization and retention of information: seeing relationships among ideas and
thinking about them in an organized way furthers understanding and facilities
recall. They include preparing outlines, preparing summaries, taking notes.
4. use of graphic and typographical aids: Illustrations to make abstract ideas clearer
and concrete such as: maps, diagrams, charts, and pictures.
5. ability to preview: taking a quick look at a reading before trying to understand the
whole thing.
6. flexibility: when to read slowly and carefully and when to read quickly, and how
to vary their reading styles according to their purposes and the nature of the
material. It deals with scanning for specific information, skimming for general
ideas.
+ Appreciation skills:
1. recognition of the language literature
2. recognition of the form of literature

According to Nuttall (1982: 62-123), he provides a list of reading skills which consists of
macro- skills of reading comprehension with Word attack skills and Text attack skills.
 Word attack skills are composed of processing morphological information,
distinguishing structural clues, inferencing (or guessing the meanings of unfamiliar
words) from context, active, receptive and throw-away vocabulary, learning to ignore
difficult words and using dictionary
 Text attack skills contain two subgroups:

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+ Significance and cohesion: understanding sentence syntax, recognizing and
interpreting cohesive devices and interpreting discourse markers
+ Discourse: recognizing functional value, tracing and interpreting rhetorical
organization, recognizing the presuppositions underlying the text, recognizing

It can be seen that there are various sub-skills of reading comprehension by different authors.
However, as mentioned in rationale for the study, such sub-skills of reading comprehension
as reading for specific information, finding the main ideas, guessing vocabulary from the
context, and making inferences are considered basic reading skills to understand the author’s
thought. Therefore, the study would focus on the four reading sub-skills.
1.6.1. Reading for specific information
Reading for specific information is the way we read the passage and only pay attention to the
relevant parts or information needed, we don’t need to take care of all printed words on the
page. We are suggested to skip unnecessary information or irrelevant parts in the passage.
With respect to reading for specific information, readers are advised to run their eyes very
quickly and only stop reading when they found the information wanted. Hence, the reading
sub-skill is close to scanning. In other words, scanning is reading strategies for locating
specific information. Brown (1994: 293) refers to reading for specific information is the way
of “quickly searching for some particular pieces of information in a text”. Grellet (1981: 19)
also claims that when locating specific information, we do not even follow the linearity of
the passage to do so, the way we should do is to “let our eyes wander over the text until we
find what we are looking for”. Clearly, the skill has strong relationship with scanning. If a
reader doesn’t recognize this relationship, he/she will take a lot of time to deal with the task
on locating specific information.
It is also realized that reading for specific information is required readers to understand the
text at their literal comprehension level, which is the lowest reading comprehension level.
Since readers only find a piece of information already in the text and then give answers.
Therefore, the tasks focused on the skill are considered to be easier than others by students.
1.6.2. Finding the main ideas
Finding the main ideas requires readers to gain their reading comprehension at both literal
and inferential level. If the main information is directly stated in the paragraph or in the

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passage, readers only understand the text at their literal reading comprehension level, if not,
they have to infer the main ideas and readers must gain their reading comprehension at

possibly some of the developing or supporting ideas. This gives them “head start” as they
embark on more focused reading” (Brown 1994: 293). It means that, in skimming, readers
have to find the general and overall ideas of the whole text in order to catch the gist of it.
In short, when dealing with finding the main ideas, it is suggested to recognize the topic(s)
first, and then distinguish the important ideas from supporting details. The term “topic”
regards to the subject while the term “main idea” is the “key concept” being expressed or is
the most important information in a piece of discourse. Supporting details are less important
information which tells how, what, when, where, why, how much or how many,… to
support more information to the main idea.
1.6.3. Guessing vocabulary from the context
It cannot be denied that vocabulary plays an essential role in reading. Wilkin (1972: 110)
states its role in reading comprehension that “without grammar, very little can be conveyed,
without vocabulary nothing conveyed”. Widdowson (1978: 3) also shares the same view, he
claims that “the knowledge of English words is one of the basic factors for the mastery of the
language”. Vocabulary is, in fact, an essential component in reading comprehension. Studies
by different investigators show that knowledge of word meaning is the most important single
factor that accounts for variability in reading comprehension. Hence, the more number of
vocabulary a reader knows, the better he/she can gain reading comprehension. However, it
is the fact that no readers can know all English words while dealing with reading materials.
They can cope with unknown words but the matter is that they know a small number of
words or a large number of words. In the case they deal with unfamiliar words, they are
suggested to make a guess at the meaning of the words they do not know rather than look
them up in a dictionary. When readers guess meaning of an unknown word, they must gain
their reading comprehension at inferential level.
In order to guess meaning of an unknown word, we should put it in its context. The context
is the setting- the sentence and paragraph- in which a word appears. The meaning of a word
in context is its meaning in the particular sentence and paragraph in which it is used. A

29
single English word can gave many different meanings, its precise meaning always depends

* Types of Inference
There are different types of inference one can draw from written discourse. They are
explained below in terms of bridging inference, contextual inference and structural inference.
- Bridging Inference: Bridging Inference is drawn to establish coherence between a
present piece of information and a preceding piece of information. Here, we have to
infer the relationship or link between these two pieces of information.
- Contextual Inference: Contextual Inference is drawn to infer the implied idea or
suggestion in a text. It concerns expectations about what events will take place in the
world described by the text, not about what events will actually be stated explicitly in
the text. In order to infer the implied idea, the reader has to use several types of
information in the text.
- Structural inference: It refers to the reader using his implicit knowledge of text
structures to facilitate his comprehension of texts. Text structure refers to how the
ideas in the text are organized by the writer.
Grellet (1981: 14) also mentioned that “Inferring means making use of syntactic, logical and
cultural clues to discover the meaning of unknown elements”. Nuttall (1996: 73-75) shared
that “this kind of activity require us to make use of schemata”.
To sum up, in this chapter, the relevant literature review to the purpose of the thesis is
presented. It starts with definitions of reading and reading comprehension, reading process,
context and the role of context, schema theory, reading comprehension levels, and reading
comprehension skills.