VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FALCUTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ĐỖ THỊ THÚY

A STUDY ON GRADE 10
TH
STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS
TOWARDS LEARNING TO READ ENGLISH AT A HIGH
SCHOOL IN THE NORTH OF VIETNAM

NGHIÊN CỨU NHẬN THỨC CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 ĐỐI VỚI
VIỆC HỌC ĐỌC HIỂU TIẾNG ANH Ở MỘT TRƯỜNG THPT Ở
MIỀN BẮC VIỆT NAM

M.A. Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111
HANOI–2014
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FALCUTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ĐỖ THỊ THÚY
ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Mrs
Hoàng Thị Hạnh, for giving effective instructions and invaluable advice during the
preparation and completion of this graduation paper.
I also wish to acknowledge my debt to all the teachers of Faculty of
Postgraduate Studies at Vietnam National University, Hanoi – University of
Languages and International Studies, whose lectures and ideas have inspired my
thesis.
My appreciation also goes to the teachers and students at Hai Hau A high
school for their valuable assistance in completing my survey questionnaire and
interview, and providing me with a lot of useful information.
Finally, I would like to send my great thanks to my family, my friends who
have directly or indirectly helped me with their encouragement and advice.
iii

ABSTRACT
Pleasure reading has greatly affected reading achievements. There have been
some studies investigating students‟ pleasure reading habits and their attitudes
towards reading in English such as Camiciottoli (2001); Ro and Chen (2014).
However, few are found investigating high school students in the context of
Vietnam. Therefore, this study will focus on high school students‟ pleasure reading
habits and their attitudes towards reading in English. A set of survey questionnaire
and interview are used to explore the 10

1. Rationale 1
2. Scope of the study 2
3. Aims of the study 2
4. Research questions 2
5. Methods of the study 3
6. Significance of the study 3
7. Structure of the report 3
PART B: THE BODY 5
Chapter 1: Literature review 5
1.1 Extensive reading and pleasure reading 5
1.1.1 Reading 5
1.1.2 Extensive reading 5
1.1.3 Pleasure reading 7
1.2 Pleasure reading habits 9
1.3 Reading attitudes 10
Chapter 2: The study 13
2.1 Setting 13
2.2 Participants 13
2.3 Instruments 14
2.4 Procedures 16 v
Chapter 3: Data analysis and findings 17
3.1 Coding and Analysis 17
3.2 Results 19
Part C: Discussion/Conclusion 31
1. Summary of major findings 31
2. Pedagogical implications 33
3. Limitations and recommendations for further studies 35

Table 3.8: Reasons Why Reading in English for Pleasure Important
Table 3.9: Gender and Frequency of English Pleasure Reading
Table 3.10: Gender and Attitude towards Pleasure Reading in English
Table 3.11: Factors that may have influenced on Pleasure Reading Habit and their
Attitudes (Pearson correlations (r))
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LIST OF GRAPHS
Figure 3.1: Pleasure reading habit and preference scores
Figure 3.2: Reading attitudes scores
Figure 3.3: Reading habits and attitudes relationship


2
literature. It is hoped that this study reveals issues concerning students‟ pleasure
reading habits and their attitudes towards reading in English in order that the
researcher can give more help for her students to encourage them to read more or
develop their reading habits. Besides, some recommendations are given to other
teachers to help students to facilitate their reading.
2. Scope of the study
Reading is a broad issue, so it is difficult to entirely discuss the matter in a minor
thesis. Therefore, this study only focuses on students‟ pleasure reading habits and
their attitudes towards reading in English, and factors affecting their reading
frequency and attitudes.
The subject under this research is 100 grade 10 students from a high school in the
North of Vietnam.
3. Aims of the study
In general, this study is designed to find out high school students‟ pleasure reading
habits and their attitudes towards reading in English.
To be specific, the research aims at:
- Investigating students‟ pleasure reading habits.
- Exploring students‟ attitudes towards reading in English
- Finding out factors affecting students‟ pleasure reading frequency and
attitudes.
4. Research questions
The study aims to answer the following questions:
1. How frequently do grade 10
th
students read in English for pleasure?
2. What are the students‟ attitudes toward reading in English? 3

Chapter 3: Data analysis and findings - describes and analyse the finding from
the students‟ questionnaire and interview.
Part C: Discussion/ Conclusion – gives a summary of the whole study, its
pedagogical implication for teachers, limitations of the study and some
recommendations for further research. 5
PART B: THE BODY
Chapter 1: Literature review
This chapter provides readers with theoretical background of the study and critical
review of previous related studies.
1.1 Extensive reading and pleasure reading
1.1.1 Reading
Reading is an important instrument providing human beings with a lot of
information which helps to build their understanding of life or worldview. Clark
and Rumbold (2006, p. 5) state that in addition to personal and mental
developments, reading is critical for ensuring one‟s access to social, economic
and civic life. Obviously, each person reads for his or her own purposes. A study
by the Nestle Family Monitor (2003) shows that 55% of young people read to
understand different people/cultures, 40% to learn more about new subjects, and
33% to try new hobbies. When asked how they would describe reading, half of the
respondents describe it as relaxing while a third finds it funny. Two in five also
consider reading as educational, while a quarter believed it to be informative for
learning (Nestle Family Monitor, 2003 as cited in Clark & Rumbold, 2009, p. 9).
1.1.2 Extensive reading
Based on purposes of reading, Nuttall (2005, p. 38) classifies reading into two main
types: intensive and extensive reading (ER). There have been many studies
reporting positive effects of ER on a range of EFL and ESL contexts. The positive
effects have been seen in areas such as reading comprehension (Bell, 2001;

shared some features. The first is that extensive reading is generally associated
with reading large amounts or long texts on the purpose of getting an overall
understanding of the material. The second is readers often use this kind of reading
to find out the meaning of the whole text rather the meaning of individual words or 7
sentences. The last one is extensive reading provides students opportunities to
update and enrich their knowledge by reading the topics they like for enjoyment
without consideration for pressure of time. Therefore, extensive reading is
regarded as an effective way for the students to improve their reading skills and
increase their general knowledge as well.
1.1.3 Pleasure reading
Sometimes, ER is referred to alternative terms such as pleasure reading, sustained
silent reading, free voluntary reading or book flood (Richards & Schmidt, 2002, p.
193–194). However, to some extents, pleasure reading and extensive reading are
not completely the same. Maley (2008) states the purposes of ER that are for
pleasure, information and general understanding. It means that in addition to
pleasure, readers learn, analyze, question and think about something during their
extensive reading. In contrast, when someone reads for pleasure, he or she reads for
fun to relax and enjoy. Obviously, they are different but connected things.
Sometimes, readers can even read for both meaning and pleasure. They may read a
book and analyze it but find as well that what they are reading is quite enjoyable.
Finding the difference between two terms, the researcher will apply the term
“pleasure reading” in this paper because it describes the type of reading that the
participants in this study engaged in. Besides, this study aims at exploring students‟
reading habits in leisure time, so it would be better to use the term “pleasure
reading”.
According to Nell (1988), reading for pleasure is a form of play that allows us to
experience other worlds and roles in our imagination. However, Pullman (2004)

Therefore, it is necessary to encourage students to apply these two forms of
reading.
9
1.2 Pleasure reading habits
The concept of reading habit is defined as “how often, how well, and what adults
like to read” (Scales & Rhee, 2001, p. 178). It means that reading habit is
measured by how frequently readers read, whether they read entire books, and what
they like to read. It refers to people‟s reading activities and how frequently they
engage in reading them (frequency of engagement). The benefits of reading in
general and pleasure reading in particular have been stated. In some countries,
however, there is evidence that reading habits have declined. A UK survey by
Sainsbury and Schagen (2004) indicates that children‟s reading enjoyment has
declined significantly in the last five years, especially amongst older children. The
study shows that the percentage of engaged readers has decreased from 77% to
71% among Year 4 pupils and from 77% to 65% amongst Year 6 pupils between
1998 and 2003. Additionally, reading habit of students in Social Sciences and Arts
at Rajshahi university have been declined (Eamin Ali Akanda, Hoq & Hasan,
2013).These researchers state that this decline is most noticeable among young
people because they are the people who are most affected by the emerging
digital technologies, especially the Internet and TV-based entertainment. Another
study carried out by Camiciottoli (2001) on Italian university EFL students‟ habits
and attitudes towards extensive reading found that “positive attitude + low
frequency” was the most common reading profile, accounting for 41.8% of the
respondents. It means that most of participants in this study did not have good
reading habits. In contrast, the result of a study by Ro and Chen (2014) on
advanced non-academic English-as-a-second-language learners in the US not only
shows that the participants had good reading habits, but also reveals that they read

leisure time”.
Various studies on reading attitudes have been carried out (Camiciottoli, 2001;
Mori, 2002; Kamhi-Stein, 2003; Yamashita, 2004, 2007). These studies have
consistently found that reading attitude is one of the factors that influence the 11
decision to read, and it greatly affects the reading achievement and performance of
second language (L2) learners. Specifically, Kamhi-Stein (2003) uses in-depth
qualitative analysis to explore four L2 college students‟ attitudes towards their
home language and beliefs about reading. She also finds that her participants‟
attitudes towards L1 and beliefs about reading affect reading processes in both L1
and L2. To be more specific, those who valued L1 used it in the process of
decoding the L2 text. Moreover, Yamashita (2004, 2007) gives evidence to show
the close relationship between Japanese college students‟ attitudes and their L2
proficiency in an EFL setting. The questionnaire items measures both affective
(i.e., feeling) and cognitive (i.e., evaluative beliefs) reactions to reading. In
Yamashita (2007) she finds that positive L1 reading attitude would likely lead the
learners, even low proficiency ones, to read in L2. While L2 proficiency has very
little effect on the transfer of reading attitude, L1 reading attitude had strong impact
on L2 reading. In her previous paper (Yamashita, 2004), she provides four sub-
components of reading attitudes including comfort, anxiety, value ascribed to
reading, and self-perception as a reader and argues that comfort with reading and
positive self-perception as a reader in both L1 and L2 had positive impact on the
learners‟amount of EFL reading while anxiety and value had no influence at all.
However, Camiciottoli (2001) argues that mere attitudes of being positive do not
guarantee frequent reading. Based on her findings, Ro and Chen (2014) carry out a
replicated study on nonacademic students in an English-as-a-second-language
(ESL) setting in order to investigate whether learners‟ positive attitudes towards L2
reading can lead to higher reading frequency (i.e., higher amount of reading).

in each class. The facilities in this school are not well-equipped. Although it has a
multimedia room with a TV, CDs, cassette players and projectors, it is only used on
special occasions. There is a library which provides a lot of reference books,
newspaper, magazines. However, materials in English are not various enough.
There are only some dictionaries and some books on grammar; thus, students
cannot access varied books for their English learning. In terms of teaching and
learning curriculum, the school follows the national one. For English, Basic
English textbooks are taught at this school. Grade 10
th
students are studying a book
with 16 units on different topics. Each unit is divided into 5 parts: reading,
speaking, writing, listening and language focus. Students attend three English
lessons per week.
2.2 Participants
Unlike two previous studies by Ro and Chen (2014) and Camiciottoli (2001) which
were conducted with non-academic ESL students at advanced level and EFL
university students respectively, the participants in this study were 81 grade 10
students (45 females,36 males) from two classes. All of them were born in 1998
and live in communes around the school. Their English levels are at pre-
intermediate level. They learn English as a foreign language and do not have
English environment to practice using English. 14 2.3 Instruments
If Camiciottoli (2001) used a 22-item questionnaire and Ro and Chen (2014)
designed a 23-item one to collect data on reading frequency and attitude, the study
only used a 17-item questionnaire to investigate students‟ pleasure reading habits

on their reading habits and attitudes. Secondly, item 13 asking about reasons of
pleasure reading was modified because the researcher found the similar options
were given, so she combined them and made it clear to her participants. Thirdly,
item about name was deleted due to ethical issue of research. Besides, because all
participants are from the same district, same age and years of studying English,
items asking about this information were deleted. Additionally, extra classes were
not allowed in the area where the study was carried out, so question related to this
private course was not relevant. Lastly, due to Vietnamese setting of the research,
items investigating time and purposes of staying in English native countries were
eliminated.
The study by Camiciottoli (2001) and Ro and Chen (2014) ask university-level
EFL instructors and CEP teachers about questionnaire items to gain construct
validity. This study also asked teacher at the high school where the research was
carried out to see if the adapted questionnaire was suitable to the participants and
the purposes of the study. Additionally, before delivering the survey questionnaire,
the researcher gave it to 10 students to make sure that they understood all the
questions.