4
ABSTRACT

In an attempt to investigate teachers’ difficulties in teaching reading skills to grade
10 students using the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” at Nha Nam High School, the research was
aimed at finding out: (1) the students’ background of English and their attitudes toward
learning speaking skills; (2) the problems the teachers might encounter in the teaching
process of the skills; (3) factors causing their difficulties and their suggested solutions.
Specially, the study has been conducted in the form of a survey research, with the
informants of the study being five English teachers at Nha Nam High School. The survey
questionnaire completed by the teachers and students, classroom observation and interview
were the main instruments employed for the data collection. The research reveals that the
students’ lack of knowledge, including linguistic and cultural background knowledge, the
teachers’ teaching methods, some difficulties from the textbook all cause problems for the
teachers in the teaching process. Besides, the data from the study confirm the fact that the
students’ poor attitudes towards the importance of reading skills in learning English
contributes to the problems in teaching the skills. In addition, the school’s lack of
conductive facilities is also made the situation worse.
Finally, the data are taken into account when the research discusses the results and
suggests some solutions to overcome those difficulties.



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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale of the Study 1

2.1.2.1. Objectives 13
2.1.2.2. Contents of the Textbook 13

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2.1.3. Teachers and Methods of teaching 14
2.2. The Participants 14
2.3. Research Instruments 15
2.3.1. Questionnaire 15
2.3.2. Class Observation 15
2.3.3. Interview 16
2.4. Data Collection Procedure 16
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 17
3.1. Presentation of Statistical Results 17
3.1.1. Classroom Observations and Interview 17
3.1.2. Questionnaire 19
3.1.2.1. Questionnaire for teachers 19
4.1.2.2. Questionnaire for students 24
3.2. Discussion of the Findings 32
3.2.1. Difficulties from Students 32
3.2.1.1. Students’ Attitudes towards Reading Skill 32
3.2.1.2. Students’ Lack of Knowledge 32
3.2.2. Difficulties from Teachers 33
3.2.3. Difficulties from the Textbook 34
CHAPTER 4: SOLUTIONS 35
4.1. Improving Students’ Reading Interest and Motivation 35
4.1.1. Making Reading Lessons Funny 35
4.1.2. Making Reading Skill Useful 35
4.2. Training Students to Become Efficient Readers 36
4.2.1. Making Students Aware of the nature of the reading process 36
4.2.2. Promoting Students with a Variety of Reading Strategies 36

the same problems. They have to confront some major obstacles in reading, such as:
students’ habits of word-by-word reading, excessive focus on details rather than main
ideas, poor vocabulary and limited background knowledge, etc. If those difficulties are not
found out and no solutions to overcome are given, it is certain that reading lessons can not
be successful and it even becomes worse.
In this situation, the teachers need to take a serious look at the teaching and
learning of English in general and the teaching and learning of the reading skills in
particular so as to suggest suitable techniques to enable the teaching and learning of the
reading comprehension at high school to be more effective. Being a teacher of English at
Nha Nam High School, the researcher wishes to give a hand in promoting reading skills for
her tenth-form students. This matter of fact has offered her a chance to conduct a study on
“Teachers’ difficulties in teaching reading skills to grade 10
th
students at Nha Nam
High School”. It is hoped that this study may offer the English teachers at schools in
general and the English techers at Nha Nam high school in particular the ways to teach
reading skills more effectively.

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2. Aims of the Study
The main purpose of the study is to research on difficulties experienced by the
teachers of English at Nha Nam High School in teaching reading skills to grade tenth
students with the textbook “Tieng Anh 10”. And then some possible solutions are offered
to help the teachers overcome these difficulties so as to make an improvement in our
teaching and learning reading skills at high schools. The specific objectives of the study are:
● To investigate the students’ attitude towards speaking skills in their English learning.
● To examine the activities and techniques applied by the teachers at Nha Nam
high school
● To identify the teachers’ major difficulties in teaching reading skills and examine
the causes.

informants were also employed.
6. Organization of the Study
The study is organized as follows:
Part I, Introduction, presents the rationale for the study, the aims, research questions,
scope and significance, methodology and organization of the study.
Part II, Development, consists of the following chapters:
Chapter 1, Literature review, presents the theoretical background of reading skills.
Chapter 2, Looks at the current situations of teaching reading skills at Nha Nam High School.
Chapter 3, Research Methodology, focuses on the participants, the instruments and data
collection procedure.
Chapter 4, Discussion of the findings, discusses the data which was collected at the
second term of the 2010-2011 academic year at Nha Nam high School based on
questionnaire, classroom observations and interviews.
Chapter 5, Solutions, makes some pedagogical suggestions for teachers and students at
Nha Nam high School.
Part III, Conclusion, summarizes all the issues in the research and suggests some ideas
for further study.
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comprehension. What the teacher understands about it will have a great influence on what

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he or she teaches in the class. In fact, methodologists have been providing different
definitions of reading comprehension.
According to Grellet (1981: 3): “Reading comprehension or understanding a
written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.”
The author means that reading comprehension is an activity which aims at decoding the
meaning of word combination in the text in the most efficient way.
Also concerning the reading comprehension, Richard and Good (1978: 9) provide a
clearer point of view:
“Reading comprehension is best described as an understanding between the author
and the reader. The emphasis is on the reader understanding of the printed page
based on the individual reader’s unique background of experience.”
So far we have looked at some definitions concerning reading and reading
comprehension which have been seen from different points of views. It is more significant
to have a more in-depth look at the reading process to make the bridge to the focus of the study.
1.1.2. Effective Reading Comprehension and Reading Comprehension Skills
1.1.2.1. What is Effective Reading Comprehension?
Ur (1996: 148) views reading comprehension as a process combining such elements as:
A clear purpose in mind; an enhanced motivation; appropriate reading comprehension
strategies based on the purposes and motivation; good prediction; sufficient background
information and vocabulary; close attention to the significant bits; and fairly high speed.
Cook (1989: 14), on the other hand, contends that effective reading comprehension
would be best reflected if we bring distinct cognitive behaviors of good versus poor readers
before, during and after reading an assignment into a comparison.
Stage
Good or mature readers
Poor or immature readers
Before reading

- Reflect on what was read
- Feel success is a result of effort
- Summarize major ideas
- Seek additional information
from outside sources
- Stop reading
- Feel success is a result of luck
1.1.2.2. Reading Comprehension Skills
Nutall (1982) provides a list of reading skills which consist of macro-skills 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 include two subgroups:
 Significance and cohesion: understanding sentence syntax, recognizing and
interpreting cohesive devices and interpreting discourse markers.
 Discourse: recognizing functional value, recognizing the presuppositions underlying
the text, recognizing implications and marking inferences, and prediction.
1.2. Teaching Reading Comprehension
1.2.1. Relationship between Reading and Other Skills
In the process of teaching and learning English, it is very crucial for learners to
realize the integration of language. That is the possibilities of other aspects of foreign
program. Therefore, reading skill is closely related to writing, listening and speaking skills.
Understanding relations will help learners succeed.
Firstly, reading is related to writing. That is when the students are asked to
summarize or continue the reading material such as resume, descriptions of the characters, etc.

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Secondly, reading is concerned with listening comprehension. Students may listen

of the text construction clarify ambiguities and make them aware of issues of the text
structure which they have not come across previously.

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In general, the teacher must be aware of what they need to do in a reading lesson.
Playing their roles well will certainly helps the teacher lead successful reading lessons.
1.2.2.2. The Role of the Students
In communicative language teaching, the learners are regarded as the centre of the
lesson. It is true in every reading lesson. During the reading process the students play the
roles of an active and creative listener and as well as reader.
In a reading lesson, students must take an active role as a listener. They need listen
to the teacher’s instructions and explanation carefully to find out the way of recognizing
information and the way of deducing new words or grammatical structures.
The students must also be active and flexible readers, it is wise if they work on
their own during the reading process, make full use of the class time to read and do the
exercise to achieve a full understanding of the text. It is necessary for them to find out
suitable reading strategy and use their background knowledge to fulfill their tasks because
the significance of the text as well as the information is not always directly stated in printed pages.
In summary, teacher and students are interrelated to each other during the process
of teaching and learning reading skills.
1.2.3. The Three Stages of a Reading Lesson
Although the role of reading activities in teaching reading is made apparent, how
they are organized and sequenced in a lesson varies among different approaches to
language teaching. In the light of recent and widely accepted communicative approach, it
is a common practice that a reading lesson includes three stages: pre-, while- and post-
reading. (William, 1984; Dubin and Bycina, 1991 cited in To et al., 2006: 158) (Hoang et
al., 2005). Each stage is characterized by its own aims and procedures as follows.
1.2.3.1. Pre-reading Stage
In this early stage, teachers are expected to motivate students to read, specifically
by activating or building students’ background knowledge of the subject and familiarizing

reading stage is aimed at consolidating or reflecting upon what has been said and relating
the text to the learners’ own knowledge, interests or views”. Normally, it takes ten or fifteen
minutes to complete all activities at this stage.
In conclusion, the above-mentioned stages are essential for a reading lesson.
However, it is not necessary to carry out all these stages mechanically on every occasion.
Depending on the purposes of each reading lesson, the teacher may apply these stages as
well as allocate time for each stage appropriately.
1.3. Difficulties in Teaching Reading
As being mentioned above, no one can deny the important role of reading skill.
However, it is uneasy for a language learner to be successful in learning reading because

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there are many factors affecting the success such as reader’s reading habits, attitude,
motivation, exposure to the target language, textual characteristics, the way reading skill is
taught and the teacher’s classroom techniques or learning environment, etc. Jolly (1978),
Coady (1979) and others grouped those factors into three types: reading skill problem, language
problem, and cultural background knowledge.
1.3.1. Reading Skill Problems
According to Jolly (1987), Coady (1979) and others, one’s first language reading
ability plays a more important role in reading success than his level of the target language
does, because foreign language reading requires the transference of old skills, not the
learning of new ones. They believe that if the reader has a poor reading ability in his mother
tongue, then, he can not read well in a foreign language.
Students’ limited reading skills create many problems, such as reading slowly,
failing to understand and summarize main ideas of the reading text, unable to guess or
predict the meaning of the words or phrases used in that context, etc. Therefore, such
students find it hard to be successful in their reading. They cannot understand the text
thoroughly and those are the reasons why they do not want to keep on reading.
In addition, learner’s motivation towards reading is also an important factor in
reading process. It may affect on reading result such as good speed, enjoyment and

From what ahs been discussed, it can be concluded that there are three main factors
that affect reading comprehension: reading skills, language knowledge, and cultural
background knowledge. Reading difficulties may be caused by a number of other factors.
Whatever kind of problems they are, great efforts must be made to overcome them.
Summary
This chapter has been concerned with establishing the theoretical backgrounds and
issues relating to the topic of the study. First, it provides an overview of the nature of
reading, in which the definitions of reading and reading comprehension are discussed.
Then, teaching comprehension is addressed. Finally, it provides an insight into reading difficulties.
The next chapter will present the current situation of teaching and learning the
textbook at Nha Nam High School, where the data is collected.

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CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

2.1. The Current Situation of Teaching and Learning the Textbook at Nha Nam High
School
2.1.1 Introduction to Nha Nam High School and its Students
Nha Nam High School is located in Tan Yen district, Bac Giang province. This is a
small school. It has 24 classes. It has been in operation for only 10 years. The school is
surrounded by villages. Like other high schools, its duty is to train students from the 10
th

form to the 12
th
form.
The class size is generally large with 37-44 learners in one. The classrooms are
equipped only with a chalkboard and desks for two students sharing one. The school has
two projectors and computers which are occasionally used by teachers of all subjects in
teaching festivals. There is a library at school but there are not many books for reference.

- Listen for the main ideas or for specific information of a monologue or a dialogue with
the length of 120-150 words of the topics they have learnt.
- Exchange information in English at a simple level about the situations relating to the
topics they have learnt.
- Comprehend passages of approximately 190-230 words about the topic s they have
learnt; Understand the main ideas of the text or understand the text in detail; Develop
vocabulary comprehension.
-Write paragraphs of about 100-120 words relating to the topics they have learnt according
to a model or with prompts.
2.1.2.2. Contents of the Textbook
The textbook “Tieng anh 10” is designed under a theme-based approach with 16
units. Each unit is about a theme. There are five parts in each unit arranged as follows:
Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing, and Language Focus.
Reading is the beginning part of each unit. The aim of this is that through reading
and through developing reading skills such as skimming, scanning, etc. the students are
provided with language input. This can help them to be acquainted with the theme. From
then, the students can speak, listen and write about the things relating to the theme in the new parts.
2.1.2.3. Characteristics of Reading Passages and Reading Tasks in the Textbook
Characteristics of Reading Passages
A reading passage in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” has 190-230 words in length.
Each passage is closely related to the theme of the unit. It is divided into small paragraphs.
Some passages are long and rather difficult for the students to understand, as there are a lot
of difficult new words and grammatical structures. It takes time to elicit them.
Characteristics of reading tasks
In each unit, three kinds of tasks are designed. Each task has its own aim.
- Task 1 helps the students to understand words or phrases in the passage.
- Task 2 helps the students to comprehend the content of the passage.
- Task 3 helps the students to have an overall understanding of the passage.

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There were 8 classes of grade ten at the time of studying. To have reliable
variables, more than half of the classes should be included in the survey. To be objective,
judgmental sampling was not possible because these classes were not at the same level. So,
the classes must be picked by random sampling. The 5 classes chosen were: 10A1, 10A2,
10A4, 10A6, 10A7 and the followings were the number of students of each class:

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- Class 10A1: 43 students (24 males and 19 females)
- Class 10A2: 37 students (10 males and 27 females)
- Class 10A4: 40 students (21 males and 19 females)
- Class 10A6: 38 students (18 males and 20 females)
- Class 10A7: 41 students (17 males and 24 females)
2.3. Research Instruments
The procedure of data collection is the survey method employing self-administered
questionnaire for both teachers and students. Classroom observations were carried out to
investigate how teachers conducted a reading period, how the students worked in the
periods and difficulties encountered. Personal discussions with individual teachers would
have been more effective to find out the problems in teaching reading skills.
In short, three measurement instruments were developed for data collection: (1)
classroom observation, (2) questionnaire, (3) interview. Those appear in the appendixes.
2.3.1. Questionnaire
These two types of questionnaire included both closed and open-ended questions.
Questionnaire for teachers was written in English, while the one for students was written in
Vietnamese to make sure that the students properly understood the questions.
Questionnaire designed for teachers aimed at seeking information of work
experience, teachers’ attitudes towards the reading sections in the textbook English 10, and
the problems they confronted with in the process of teaching reading skills.
Questionnaire for students tended to survey on their perception about the importance of
reading skills in learning English as a compulsory subject at school, their evaluation of
their current speaking competence, and difficulties they encountered in learning reading skills.

It is noted that in order to make it easy in analyzing data, 199 students of the tenth
form were surveyed. In stead of randomly selecting the individual, the researcher randomly
selected the classes for investigation.
Totally 204 copies of the questionnaire were delivered to students and 5 teachers
and all of the copies were returned and respectively used for analysis.

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CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

3.1. Presentation of Statistical Results
3.1.1. Classroom Observations and Interview
The observation sheet was adapted from Brown, 1994. The results of classroom
observations are summarized in the table below:
* Note: A: applicable NA: not applicable
Categories
Results (%)
Criteria
A
NA
I. Preparation
1. Class organization (well-prepared and well-organized)

10. Time amount is distributed appropriately to the stages of the lesson
33.3
66.7
IV. Personal characteristics
11. Patience in eliciting students’ responses
66.7
33.3
12. Clarity, tone and audibility of voice
66.7
33.3

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13. Pronunciation, intonation, fluency are in appropriate and acceptable
use of language
33.3
66.7
V. Teacher-student interaction
14. Teacher is a facilitator
33.3
66.7
15. Students are attentive and involved
33.3
66.7
16. Students are active
33.3
66.7
17. Effective individual, pair, and group work
33.3
66.7
18. Teacher’s controlling

taking time was too much whereas that of the students was limited. Teachers tended to
explain the tasks and did almost of everything for students. In other words, teachers
controlled and directed the class according to the lessons.
When the teachers asked questions in English, many students sat quietly,
pretending to concentrate on the book but they had no answer. It seemed that they did not
understand what teachers were saying. However, when the teachers translated the
questions into Vietnamese, more than half of the class were likely to understand and began
to discuss (mostly in Vietnamese) to find the responses. This showed that the students were
not able to understand the teachers much in English because it appeared that they had low
English proficiency.
Apart from this, most of the teachers (2 out of 3) failed to organize pair and group
work effectively. Students joined timidly and used their mother tongue most of the time
during the tasks. In addition, one or two students in each group were so dominated while
the rest kept silent, listening to and following others’ instructions. It was seen that the
students were of different levels of English. One teacher answered the question while being
interviewed: “Most of the students do not work effectively and often depend on others’ in
pair wok or group work, so I do not let them work in groups very often.”
Furthermore, the majority of students in the classes observed were passive. They
hardly asked questions, disagreed, or expressed their own ideas. The teachers found it
difficult to encourage the students’ participation.
In short, the findings collected from class observation were: Teachers’ overuse of
Vietnamese; limited use of authentic materials; students’ low English proficiency; infective
organization of group work; students’ passive learning; little encouragement to students’
participation. The findings in the class observations were used to designed questionnaire.
3.1.2. Questionnaire
3.1.2.1. Questionnaire for teachers
3.1.2.1.1. Methodology

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To elicit a reply for the difficulties the teachers at Nha Nam High School

Not so important as other skills
0
0%
Table 2: Teachers’ attitudes towards reading skill
Table 2 showed the teachers’ attitudes towards reading skill in comparison with the
other skills. The majority (80%) of the teachers agreed that reading skill was the most
important for the students in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10”. Only one of them said that
reading skill was as important as the others. None of the teachers put other skills ahead of
reading. 21
Question 2:
Opinions
Teachers
Percentage
Easy-to-teach
0
0%
Interesting
4
80%
Difficult-to-teach
4
80%
Boring
1
20%
Too long
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structures (80%) whereas cultural knowledge and ideas in the reading texts were paid very
little attention to. 20% of them focused on cultural knowledge and 40% focused on ideas in the reading texts.
Question 4:
This question was to find out the normal activities of the teachers in a reading
lesson. As the result suggested, in the pre-reading stage, the teachers often encouraged
their students to involve in some activities. 4 out of 5 teachers introduced the topic of the
reading text. All of them introduced new words appearing in the reading text. 2 out of 5