A Study on some possible effective pre-reading activities to improve reading skills
for the 2
nd -
year English Majors at the Military Science Academy
PART A: INTRODUCTION
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1
LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Theoretical background of reading
1.3. Teaching and learning reading skills
1.4. Theoretical background of motivation
1.5. Summary
Chapter 2
THE STUDY
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Situation analysis
2.3. Sample and sampling
2.4. Instruments for collecting the data
2.5. Data analysis.
Chapter 3
Major findings and suggestions of some possible Pre
reading activities applied to teach More Reading Power to
the Second-year English Majors at the MSA
3.1. Major findings
3.2. Suggestions of some possible Pre-reading activities applied to teach More
Reading Power to the Second-year English Majors at the MSA
3.3. Summary
PART C: CONCLUSION
1. Summary of the study
2. Limitations and suggestions for further study

at least several years, it is still often difficult for them to understand a text or a passage in
English, since they still lack vocabulary, grammar, reading skills and poor background
2
knowledge. Besides, the teachers sometimes have to face with difficulties in dealing with the
students’ learning demand and newly introduced sources of materials. In addition, teaching
methods and teaching techniques in general, are still below the international standard of
education. To find out the areas of students’ difficulty at the MSA and the causes of their
unsuccessful reading comprehension is necessary. Therefore, these reasons have inspired the
writing of A Study on some possible effective pre-reading activities to improve reading
skills for the 2
nd -
year English Majors at the Military Science Academy. It is hoped that
the study will make some contributions to improve the learning of English in general, and
the learning of reading in particular among the 2
nd
-year English majors at the MSA. The
author also hopes that it will be possible to make suggestions for the teachers to improve the
situation of teaching and learning reading at the MSA.
II. Aims of the study
The main purposes of the study are to investigate pre-reading techniques employed
by the teachers of English at the MSA, and to give a suggestion of some possible pre-
reading activities that can be applied to teach the text book More Reading Power to the
second-year students of English at the MSA.
To achieve these purposes, the study will focus on the following aims:
* To understand better and more fully the notions of reading and reading
comprehension, etc.
* To investigate the teachers’ and students’ attitude towards the pre- reading techniques.
* To examine the students’ preference for pre-reading techniques.
* To suggest some possible pre-reading activities which are thought to be effective
for teaching reading to the 2

the students’ motivation in reading lessons.
VI. Design of the study
The study is composed of three parts: Part A-Introduction provides rationale, the
aims, scope, methods, and design of the study. Part B-Development consists of three
chapters: Chapter 1-Literature review, conceptualizes the study’s theoretical background,
presents the concepts relevant to the topic of the thesis: reading and reading comprehension,
classification of reading, role of reading in foreign language learning, motivation and factors
in teaching and learning reading. Chapter one will be closed with the importance of the Pre-
reading activities in a reading lesson. Chapter 2-The study, presents the methodology used
in the study. It also shows the detailed results of the survey and covers a comprehensive
analysis on the data collected form questionnaires and class observations. Chapter 3-offers
some major findings and suggestions of some possible Pre-reading activities which are
thought to be helpful for teaching reading to the 2
nd-
year students of English at the MSA.
Part C- Conclusion is a review of the study, future directions for further research and
limitations of the study as well.
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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1
LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Introduction
In this chapter, the author mainly concerns with reviewing the notions of reading and
reading comprehension. The review includes the definitions of each notion and followed by
the classification of reading, the importance of reading in foreign language learning, theory
of motivation and factors in teaching and learning reading. Last but not least, the importance
of the Pre-reading activities are also presented in this chapter as the main purpose of the
research
1.2. Theoretical background of reading
1.2.1. Definitions of reading and reading comprehension

Another definition of reading was offered by Allen and Valletta (1977: 249). In their
opinion, “reading is a developmental process”. We learn reading not only to know how to
read, to master the symbols, the sound, the language, the grammar etc, that used in the text
but also to understand the ideas, the information expressed in that text or to develop the
ability of reconstructing its content using our own words. One more researcher called
Goodman (1971: 153) considers reading is “a psycholinguistic 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.”
Reading involves a reader, a text, and a writer. Reading skills are developed in an
active process. This process involves the surface representation encoded by a writer and ends
with interpretation of the written text and interchanges between the writer and the reader
(Goodman 1969 in Carrell 1988). If the writer is careless, the reader may not get the
message. If the writer makes demands that the reader cannot fulfill, the message will not be
received, even though to another reader it might be clear. If the reader is careless, reading
will result in incomplete interpretation. The reader tries to interpret the text through his/her
own experiences, but they may differ from the writer’s experiences. This explanation proves
that reading is not just an active process, but also an interactive one. Reading is closely
linked with meaning. For this reason, lack of shared assumptions presents the most difficult
problem in reading.
To sum up, from all these opinions above, it is obvious that no definition can possibly
capture all the ideas and features of what reading is. Each linguist’s definition reflects what
reading means as seen from his own point of view. However, they all have some features in
common, they share the same ideas that reading means we-the readers read the author’s mind
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not author’s word, and that reading means comprehending written language and it employs a
variety of skills. In addition, they all concentrate on the nature of reading.
1.2.1.2. Definition of reading comprehension
In teaching and learning a foreign language in general and teaching reading in
particular, reading comprehension plays an important part, it can be understood as the ability
to draw attention to the required information from the text as efficiently as possible. So what

silent reading.
* Reading aloud involves “looking at the text, understanding it and also saying it”
(Doff: 70) and he considers reading aloud as a way to convey necessary information to
someone else. Very few people are required to read aloud as a matter of daily routine. The
readers are asked to read the text so loudly that other people can hear it. Reading aloud does
not happen outside the classroom as Doff (1988: 67) said, “reading aloud is not an activity
we engage in very often outside the classroom”.
Reading aloud has both advantages and disadvantages. Natal (1966) sees reading
aloud as an important aid for beginners to improve their pronunciation. It helps students to
make the connection between sounds and spelling of letters and words and also assists the
teacher to check students’ pronunciation. Moreover, it is a technique for him to keep the
class under control, since when one student reads aloud, the others are asked to listen in case
they may be required to continue the reading.
However, Greenwood (1985) criticizes this idea; he claims that students may unable
to focus adequately on the text’s meaning when they highly concentrate on pronouncing the
words. His point of view implied 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
of all, when reading aloud, students only focus on the pronunciation not on the meaning of
the text. The second thing is that 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, this way of reading usually waste much time because students read in turn so they
have to wait one after one. It can be inferred that there is little value in reading aloud if we
want to improve the readers’ reading skills. Therefore, the teachers as educators 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 “the method we normally use with our native language and on the
whole quickest and most efficient” Lewis (1985: 110). Sharing the same idea, Doff (1988:
67) defined silent reading as followed: “silent reading involves looking at sentence and
understanding the message it conveys, in other words making sense of a written text. It does
8

Nuttal (1982: 23). “Intensive reading”, from Francoise’s point of view, “means reading short
texts to extract specific information. This is an accuracy activity that involves reading for
9
detailed” Francoise (1981: 41). It can be inferred that IR often refers to the careful reading of
shorter, more difficult foreign language texts with the goal of complete and detailed
understanding. IR is also associated with the teaching of reading in terms of its component
skills. Texts are studied intensively in order to introduce and practice reading skills such as
distinguishing the main idea of a text from the detail, finding pronoun referents, or guessing
the meaning of unknown words.
* Extensive reading (ER)
In everyday life, to read extensively means to read widely and in quantity. In the early
part of this century, extensive reading took on a special meaning in the context of teaching
modern languages. Some researchers such as Harold Palmer in Britain and Michael West in
India worked out the theory and practice of extensive reading as an approach to foreign
language teaching in general, and to the teaching of foreign language reading in particular.
Carrell and Carson (1997: 49,50) stated that “extensive reading generally involves
rapid reading of large quantities of material or longer reading for general understanding, with
the focus generally on the meaning of what is being read than on the language.” Although
this definition provides an overview of ER, Davis (1995: 329) offers another description of
ER from an English Language Teaching (ELT) classroom implementation perspective: “An
extensive reading program is supplementary class library scheme, attached to an English
course, in which pupils are given the time, encouragement, and materials to read pleasurably,
at their own level, as many books as they can, without the pressures of testing or marks.
Thus, pupils are competing only against themselves, and it is up to the teacher to provide the
motivation and monitoring to ensure that the maximum number of books is being read in the
time available. The watchwords are quantity and variety, rather than quality, so that books
are selected for their attractiveness and relevance to the pupils’ lives, rather than for literary
merit”.
According to Grellet (1981: 2) ER means “reading a longer text usually for one’s own
pleasure. This is a fluency activity, mainly involving general understanding”. Sharing the

glancing at the headlines”. That means when we quickly to get general impression to see
whether the text is useful to us, it is not necessarily searching for a specific details and key
words. Skimming provides an overview of the text so it is beneficial to look at chapter/
section headings, summaries and opening paragraphs, therefore, the purpose of skimming are
to check relevance of the text and to set the scene for more concentrated effort that is to
follow if the text is useful.
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To sum up, skimming is a very useful reading skill for students, and it is advisable to
apply at the first stage of teaching reading with the hope that it can help them to have an
overview of what they are reading. Moreover, it will be easier for them to deal with the other
tasks that followed.
* Scanning
Based on the theory of scanning made by Williams (1986: 100) “Scanning occurs
when a reader goes through a text very quickly in order to find a particular point of
information”, it can be understood that scanning is very high speed reading. When you scan,
you often have a question in your mind. You do not read every word, only the words that
answer your question. Practice scanning can help you to skip over unimportant words so that
you can read faster. Scanning is another useful skill of reading which involves finding a
particular piece of information that we need. In scanning, we-the reader, usually focus on
searching the information we want, moving our eyes quickly along the lines. That is why
scanning is widely used in everyday life. For example, you might scan the list of names in a
telephone directory in order to find a phone number. It can also be usually practiced with
variety of sources such as dictionaries, indexes, advertisements, magazine, newspaper
articles, encyclopedia entries, labels, or reference materials and so on. Scanning is regarded
as a useful and important technique that helps students understand the gist of the texts well.
Generally speaking, there are different styles of reading and they are determined not
by the texts but by the readers’ reasons for reading. An effective reader is the one who can
adapt his flexibly according to his purpose of reading. A reader skims through the text to see
what it is about before scanning for specific information he is looking for. He does not
choose the text either extensively or intensively. To understand a text, these types of reading

Many linguistics state that the teacher is the most important factor in teaching
reading. In a reading class, the teacher plays so many roles, such as an organizer, a manager
and a counselor, an instructional expert, so he or she should be a guide to assist, encourage
them, employ various types to support the students develop reading skills. He or she also the
person who provides the students with an anxiety-free atmosphere which helps them feel free
to join new reading style, practice to master new strategies, work under pressure of time.
Besides, linguistics point out an essential element of the teacher’s role-a model
reader. According to Nuttall (1982: 192) “showing that you are a reader means carrying
books around with you, referring to books as you teach, reading out brief passages that may
interest students, talking about what you are reading at the moment, and handling books as if
you loved them”. He also states that “teacher’s job as providing, first, suitable texts and
second, activities that will focus the students’ attention on the texts”
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1.3.2.2. Students’ role
Obviously, students themselves play an important role in improving their own
reading skills. Nuttall (2003: 33) provides several major roles for the students in a reading
lesson. First, they should “take an active part in reading”. This is the first and foremost
responsibility of the learners. They have to be active and take charge of what they do.
Second, students have to take the risk of making mistakes because a mistake is an
opportunity to learn. The next thing is “monitoring comprehension”, which means students
need to understand how texts work and what they do when they read. They have to learn
how to carry on a dialogue with the text. The last thing for them to do is learning not to cheat
oneself, students who do not want to learn to read can easily cheat, but in fact, they are
cheating themselves, it is just a waste of time and their opportunities as well.
1.3.2.3. The reading texts
It can not be denied that reading texts play a crucial role in teaching and learning
reading because through them new grammar, phonetic and lexical items of the target
language are introduced. Furthermore, texts are also means to help students enrich their
background knowledge and vocabulary as well. In reading lesson, students are supposed to
understand the texts correctly as much as possible, learn some new language items e.g.

motivation are competence-feeling that you know how to do things, autonomy-being able to
perform an activity by yourself without external help and relatedness-connection with your
social environment like helping the others. This can be understood that intrinsic motivation
comes from the individual, or in other words, from one’s interest or curiosity.
* Extrinsic Motivation (IM)
We experience extrinsic motivation when we do something tin order to earn a grade
or reward or when we are not interested in the activity for its own sake. Harmer (2001)
indicates that extrinsic motivation is “caused by any number of outside factors such as the
need to pass an exam, the hope of financial reward or the possibility of future travel”.
Most writers agree that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation interact with each other and
play an important role in second language learning. As a result, students can be either
motivated by internal or external factors depending on the circumstances and conditions the
activity is performed.
1.4.2. The importance of motivation in second language learning
As mentioned above, motivation is essential to success in most field of learning. We
will almost certainly fail to make the necessary effort without motivation. Many studies have
proved that motivation is very strongly related to achievement in language learning. Brown
(1990) shares this point of view by claiming that “a learner will be successful with the proper
motivation”.
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There has been a great deal of research on the role of motivation in second language
learning. However, it is not simple for researchers to indicate precisely how motivation is
related to learning. This can be explained that “motivation in second language is a complex
phenomenon, which can be defined in terms of two factors: learners’ communicative needs
and their attitudes towards the second language community” (Lightbown and Spada, 1999).
Motivation is one of the main determining factors in success in foreign or second language
learning. According to Oxford and Shearing (1996: 121,122) “motivation is important
because it directly influences how often students use L2 learning strategies, how much
students interact with native speakers, how much input they receive in the language being
learned (the target language), how well they do on curriculum-related achievement tests,

encouragement or discouragement of motivation to learn. Furthermore, the teachers’
activities and tasks are the key component to the students’ motivation learning reading skill.
Therefore, the teachers should aware of their students’ needs, including their motivation for
reading and the purpose that reading has in their lives. They should provide suitable
techniques to help the students to develop their competence as readers during the reading
lessons.
1.4.4. Definition and the importance of Pre-reading activities in learning reading
Different researchers such as Lazar (1993: 83), Chen and Graves (1995: 664),
Taglieber, Johnson and Yarbough (1988: 456), and Moorman and Blanton (1990: 176) have
provided many definitions of Pre-reading activities. Lazar for example, defines pre-reading
activities as activities that help students with cultural background, stimulate student interest
in the story, and pre-teach vocabulary. Chen and Graves define Pre-reading activities as
“devices for bridging the gap between the text’s content and the reader’s schemata”.
Focusing on L1 reading instruction, Taglieber, Johnson and Yarbough (1988: 456)
point out the motivational aspect of Pre-reading activities. According to these writers, pre-
reading activities activate or develop prior knowledge, provide knowledge of the text
structure and also establish a reason for reading.
It can not be denied that Pre-reading activities play a crucial important role in
motivating the students through the reading lesson. The aim of using Pre-reading activities is
to activate the reader’s background knowledge, to prevent failure, and to support the reader’s
interpretation of the text. Employing Pre-reading activities in the first stage of the reading
lesson can promote interaction between the reader and the text. Ur (1996) emphasises that
the aim of Pre-reading activities is to provide anticipation and activate reader in the next
stages of the reading process. The purpose of using these activities is to develop a better self-
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awareness of the relationship between the reader’s meaning and the author’s meaning; and to
help readers understand the teacher’s expectations and views.
1.5. Summary
In this chapter, the relevant literature which has helped from the theoretical
background and conceptual framework for the study is presented. First, definitions of