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PART A: INTRODUCTION
I. Rationale
In many second or foreign language teaching situations, reading receives a special
focus. There are a number of reasons for this. First, many foreign language students often
have reading as one of their most important goals. They want to be able to read for
information and pleasure, for their career, and for study purposes. In fact, in most EFL
situations, the ability to read in a foreign language is all that students ever want to acquire.
Second, written texts serve various pedagogical purposes. Extensive exposure to
linguistically comprehensible written texts can enhance the process of language
acquisition. Good reading texts also provide good models for writing and provide
opportunities to introduce new topics, to stimulate discussion and to study language.
Reading, then, is a skill which is highly valued by students and teachers alike.
In process of teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam in
general, and at the Military Science Academy (MSA) in particular, reading has always
been offered a great deal of attention both from the teachers and the students.
Like many others universities in Vietnam, English at the MSA is learnt and taught
in non-native environment, therefore, reading is not only considered as a means to gain
knowledge but also a means by which further study takes place. In other words, learners
“read to learn” (Burns, 1988:11).
According to Carrel (1981:1), “for many students, reading is by far the most
important of the four skills in a second language, particularly in English as a second or
foreign language”. This is especially true to the students at the MSA, where learners are
mostly future interpreters, translators, or teachers of English in others Military Colleges
whose desires are to be able to handle subjects related to written materials in English and
to work with their English-speaking colleagues and partners. It is essential for them to
acquire the ability to read English effectively and efficiently. However, despite the
teachers’ and students’ effort, students still often claim to have a lot of difficulties in
reading English textbooks or English materials, and therefore, they sometimes read them
inefficiently.
For the second-year students of English, although they have been learning English

To improve reading skill for students of English at the MSA, the teachers can make
use of various techniques and number of things should be done. However, in this study, the
author only intends to overview a brief of current situation of teaching and learning reading
of the 2nd-year students of English at the MSA, and to suggest some possible activities that
can be applied in the Pre-reading stage in order to motivate students in reading lesson as
well as help them to become good and effective readers.
IV. Methods of the study
The study was carried out on the basis of qualitative research method including
questionnaires and class observation.

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Questionnaires are designed as a mean to make the researcher’s evaluation more
objective. The questionnaires are given to the second-year students and the teachers of
English at the MSA with the hope to find out their attitudes towards pre-reading techniques
and their comments and suggestions for these activities. Data were collected through the
survey questionnaires and class observation.
Analyzing statistics from the survey questionnaire on reading activities conducted with
the cooperation of the both teachers and students at the MSA. All comments, remarks,
recommendation assumptions, and conclusion provided in the study based on the data analysis.
Besides, more information needed for the study is gathered through other methods
such as class observations, informal interviews, and discussions with the teachers and
students at the MSA.
V. Significance of the study
The study highlights the importance of motivation to the reading skills in general
and to the pre-reading stage in particular. Moreover, the findings of the study are thought
to be useful for teachers of English to be aware of the essential role of the pre-reading
activities to the students’ motivation in reading lessons.

1.2.1.1. Definition of reading
Reading is often referred to as the most important of the four language skills for
EFL learners, as it enables students to gain exposure to the target language and receive
valuable linguistic input to build up language proficiency (Erten & Razı, 2003). We can
not be sure when reading activity begins, but we have to admit that reading is essential
activity that provides a great contribution in obtaining knowledge. It is obvious that in real
life we usually spend much time reading all sorts of things like books, magazines,
newspapers, novels, stories. However, sometimes we read but we do not understand what
they mean, or can not understand the text we read. In this case, it can not be called reading.
So what is reading?
There have been numerous definitions of reading each of them is the reflection of
its author’s view of the reading process. Anderson (1999: 1) explains this very neatly as
follows: “Reading is an active, fluent process which involves the reader and the reading
material in building meaning. Meaning does not reside on the printed page or occurs in
reading, which combines the words on the printed page with the reader’s background
knowledge and experiences.”
According to Harmer (1989: 153), reading is a mechanical process that “eyes
receive the message and the brain then has to work out the significance of the message”. In
his definition, Harmer focuses on both two actions dominated by the eyes and the brain as
well as on the speed of the process “a reading text moves at a speed of the reader”, which
means that the readers themselves decides how fast he wants to read the text.

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Sharing the same opinion, Smith (1985:102) defines “reading understands the
author’s thought”. He also added that “understanding print or even receiving
communication can hardly be said to explain reading”. The problem still remains how the
reader understands the print or the message. “It means that we-the reader-read the author’s



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read the author’s mind 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 is reading comprehension?
According to Richard and Thomas (1987: 9), “Reading comprehension is best
described as an understanding between the author and the reader”. This point of view
concentrates on the reader’s understanding of the message based on the individual’s
background knowledge. They stated that “reading is much more than just pronouncing
words correctly or simply knowing what the author intends: it is the process whereby the
printed pages stimulate ideas, experiences and responses that are unique to an individual.”
In his book, Swan (1975: 1) pointed out that “A student is good at comprehension
we mean that he can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information
of a text with the minimum of understanding”. For Roe, Stood and Burns (1987: 9):
Reading comprehension is reconstruction, interpretation, and evaluation of what author of
written content means by using knowledge gained from life experience.
Study the nature of reading comprehension, Grilled (1981: 3) indicated that
“Reading comprehension or understanding written text means extracting the required
information from it as effectively as possible”. This means that the student can show his
understanding by re-expressing the content of the text in many ways such as summarizing
the text, answering questions etc.
From these theories above, it can be understood that reading for comprehension is
the primary purpose for reading; raising students' awareness of main ideas in a text and
exploring the organization of a text are essential for good comprehension. It is the process

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

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(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 not normally involve saying the words we read nor even silently in our heads”.
Therefore, we can see that silent reading is an effective skill for reading comprehension
since students do not need to read all the words of a text, they can read at their own speed
and in case they do not understand a sentence they can go back to read again. When
reading silently, students not only obtain its main ideas in the shortest length of time but
also deeply understand its details and can answer the questions as well.
To summarize, silent reading is one effective skill for reading process in general
and reading comprehension in particular, since the teacher can check his or her students’
understanding easily and can adjust the reading materials and exercises to suit the students’
ability. Therefore, it should be applied in teaching and learning a foreign language.
1.2.2.2. According to purposes

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 same view, Hammer (1986: 497) claimed that: “Extensive reading would normally start
with reading for the main ideas or for general information then for general comprehension

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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,

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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.
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

life, behaviors, thoughts and other aspect of the native people and it is also a good way to
find out about new ideas, facts and experiences. Therefore, they can master vocabulary,
grammar and the background knowledge or cross-cultural problems that they encounter.
In other words, reading is very important to the foreign language learners because it widen
their knowledge of language and life. In the context of MSA, it seems to be the most
important skill to the students of English since their main purpose is to understand the
written texts.
1.3.2. Factors in teaching and learning reading
1.3.2.1. Teacher’s role
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.

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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”
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

motivation is an internal state or condition that serves to activate or energize behavior and
give it direction. Kleinginna (1981: 6) defines motivation as “a desire or want that
energizes and directs goal-oriented behavior”. Sharing the same point, Brown (2000: 160)
indicates that “motivation is some kinds of internal drive which pushes someone to do
things in order to achieve something”. Motivation is also suggested by Woolfork (2001:
136) as “an internal state that arouses, directs and maintains behavior”.
Kinds of motivation and their features have been discussed by scholars and
psychologists, who refer to motivation which comes from inside as well as from outside.
According to the researchers, there are many different kinds of motivation such as
Integrative, Instrumental Intrinsic, Extrinsic, Global Situational, and Tasks. Among them,
intrinsic and extrinsic motivations have an important part in classroom motivation and they
are partially accessible to teacher influence.
* Intrinsic Motivation (IM)
According to Wlodkowsk (1991) intrinsic motivation refers to “motivation to
engage in an activity for its own sake”. Sharing the same point, Reeve (1996) defines that
intrinsic motivation “is the natural tendency to seek out and conquer challenges as we
pursue personal interests and exercise capabilities”. Raffini (1996) also states that “what
motivates us to do something when we do not have to do anything”. The factors that
support intrinsic 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

exams. That is why it is essential to make the learners aware that both intrinsic and
extrinsic motivations are beneficial in second language learning.
1.4.3. The importance of motivation in learning reading
Study on the importance of motivation in learning reading, Redneck and Lester,
(2000: 5) state that: “motivation is one of the most important ingredients in skilled
reading”. You can realize that you are more engaged when you are reading something that
interests you. There are many factors that can help you become interested in what you are
reading, such as: your thoughts, feelings, interests, and your background knowledge.
Reading motivation refers to the desire to read, even when not required to do so. Reading

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motivation involves seeking out opportunities to read for curiosity, knowledge, and
involvement. Researchers, who study on reading, recognize that in order to create lifelong
readers, endowing the learners with proficient reading are not enough. They also need to
have internalized motivation. Besides, reading material is another important factor that
greatly influences the students’ motivation in a reading lesson. First of all, if the reading
material is interesting and relevant to the students, it will motivate them to read more.
Reading material should have suitable contents, this means, the texts are considered
suitable will tell the students thing they do not know and introduce them to new and
relevant ideas. Secondly, reading material’s language items such as vocabulary and
grammatical structures may have an impact on the students’ motivation. Through the texts,
the students can understand the way the others feel or think and make them read for
themselves. In addition, teacher also poses an important factor in motivating the students in
a reading lesson. The teachers play the key role in creating a good classroom environment,
since it has a powerful effect on the 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’

reading and reading comprehension have been given. Second, some kinds of reading
suggested by different theorists have been presented and taken into consideration. What is
more, concepts and ideas about motivation in general and in second language learning in
particular have been mentioned. In addition, the importance of motivation and the factors
affecting the students’ motivation in learning reading skill as well as definitions and the
importance of Pre-reading activities have also been reviewed. The next chapter will display
the methodology and findings of the research in the light of the theories mentioned above.

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Chapter 2
THE STUDY
2.1. Introduction
In this chapter, the author attempts to outline two parts of the study. The first part
focuses on the current situation of teaching and learning reading skill at the MSA, in which
the description of the subjects as well as settings for the study and instruments are
discussed. The second part is an analysis on the data collected from the survey
questionnaires and the class observation.
2.2. Situation analysis
2.2.1. Aims of the study
Being a teacher of English at the English Department, MSA for over ten years, I have
decided to carry out a survey on pre-reading activities conducted by the teachers and students
at the MSA in order to find out whether the assumption above is true or not. Finally, I will
come up with a suggestion of some possible pre-reading activities with the hope to motivate
students in reading lessons as well as to improve their reading skills in general.
2.2.2. The setting of the study
This study was conducted at the MSA, where the author is teaching. The Academy
has been in operation for more than fifty years. It is the unique Military College of the

Reading Power.
(*) Of the 30 teachers, they all have Diploma Degree in English while twenty of
them have M.A. Degree in Education, Linguistics, or International Relations and another
one has Ph.D. Degree in Linguistics. Most of them have at least three years of teaching,
therefore, with no doubt, they are experienced and enthusiastic teachers, they are always
willing to help their students overcome the difficulties and make progress in learning
English. These teachers are now teaching English to the students of different courses at the
MSA: full time, short time courses (These courses last for about two years and they are
used for Army Officers who have Diploma Degree in other foreign languages and now are
serving in different branches of the Army belonging to the Ministry of Defense).
(*) The 80 students under investigation are in the second term of the second year at
the English Department of the MSA (both cadet and civilian students, male and female).
These students’ ages are between 20 and 22 years old. They are supposed to have quite an
equal knowledge of English before entering the MSA since most of them have learnt
English for at least 7 years (from grade 6 to grade 12 at school). Moreover, they all passed
a very challenging entrance exam. Some of them come from Hanoi, the rest come from
different provinces around the country. These students were chosen from 110 second year
students during the school year of 2006-2007. They have completed their first three terms
of the four-year course. Of course it was very difficult to select a sample of individuals
since the students had already assigned to four different classes.

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2.2.4. Reading materials
2.2.4.1. An overview of the textbook More Reading Power
English has been made compulsory in the curriculum of our Academy. It is mainly
taught to those who work for the Ministry of Defense and most of them are army officersto-be. When they enter the academy, they continue to study English for at least four years.
During this time, they are divided into two stages: The first stage is for pre-intermediate



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Part one: Reading for Pleasure
Many students have never learned to enjoy reading for pleasure (reading
extensively) in English. We all know that in order to be a good reader, it is necessary to
read a lot. Students must understand the importance of reading extensively, and then they
must be encouraged to develop the habit of reading regularly for pleasure.
In this part, students are instructed to select books to read for pleasure or individual
basic. These books should be neither too easy nor difficult. They should not be books that
are required in other courses that students have already read in translation. Most important,
students should be encouraged to choose any books they want such as: fiction, nonfiction,
literature, or popular culture. What concerns most is that the book is of interest to the
individual student and that the student actually wants to read it.
Part two: Reading comprehension Skills
Reading is a very complex task involving many different skills. In this part of the book,
students will practice some important reading comprehension skills. Each new comprehension
skill is introduced with a rationale and practiced in a series of exercises sequenced from simple
to more difficult ones in order to build up the students’ mastery of the skill. The skills covered
include both “top-down” (concept-driven) and “bottom-up” (text-driven) models of reasoning
and comprehending. Through which they will learn to think in new ways about what they are
reading. And they may find that their reading comprehension in their native language will also
be improved. There are ten Units in this Part:
Unit 1: Scanning.
Unit 2: Previewing and Predicting
Unit 3: Vocabulary Knowledge for Effective Reading
Unit 4: Topics
Unit 5: Topics of Paragraphs
Unit 6: Main ideas
Unit 7: Patterns of Organization

already know. Through the exercises provided in these units, students are required to
choose topic of a group of words, or identify the topics from the words and paragraphs
given, etc.
* Extracting main ideas: Sometimes it is difficult to see what the main ideas of a
passage are, or to distinguishing between important and unimportant information. The
exercises in unit six of this part encourage students to read for the general sense rather than
for the meaning of every single word.
* Understanding text organization patterns: Students may have trouble in seeing how
a passage is organized. The exercises in unit 7 of this part give practice in recognizing how
sentences are joined together to make paragraphs form the passage, and how this
organization is signaled. Besides, the students are also work with four of the most common
patterns of organization such as: Listing, Sequence, Comparison/ Contrast and Cause-Effect

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* Writing summaries: Summarizing is usually viewed as a writing skill, but it is
also a very useful reading skill, since it requires the reader to monitor comprehension. In
order to summarize the reader must understand thoroughly the main idea and the main
points of a text. Therefore, most of exercises in unit ten involve the students in actively
writing summaries. In summarizing, the students must try to condense and paraphrase the
ideas in the text. These skills often do not come easily to students, but they are essential for
many kinds of writing.
Part three: Thinking skill
Learning to read well in English means learning to think in English, however, many
students are used to translating as they read and have great difficulty thinking in another
language. If the students want to read well in English, they must think in English when
they read. If they think in another language and translate form the English, they will
always have difficulty with comprehension. Understanding the words and grammar is not

that prevents them from reading effectively. Therefore, it is the teacher’s task to select and
apply suitable techniques and activities that can activate students’ basic knowledge and
increase their interests in the reading lesson, especially before they read the texts.
2.3. Sample and sampling
The sample was drawn from two sources: from 45 full-time teachers of English
aged from 25 to 45 and 110 second-year students and they are learning the text book More
Reading Power.
The researcher invited 30 teachers (about 67% of the population), they all have
Diploma Degree in English and twenty of them have M.A. Degree in Education,
Linguistics, or International Relations and another one has Ph.D. Degree in Linguistics.
The reason for choosing them was that all of them were teaching at the English
Department of the MSA. Most of them have at least three years of teaching, therefore, with
no doubt, they are experienced and enthusiastic teachers, they are always willing to help
their students overcome the difficulties and make progress in learning English.
The students under investigation are in the second term of the second year at the
English Department of the MSA (both cadet and civilian students, male and female, aged
from 19 to 25). They are divided into four groups and are supposed to have quite an equal
knowledge of English before entering the MSA since most of them have learnt English for
at least 7 years (from grade 6 to grade 12 at school). Moreover, they all passed a very
challenging entrance exam in order to become a student at our academy. These students
were chosen from 110 second year students during the school year of 2006-2007. They
have completed their first three terms of the four-year course. Of course it was very
difficult to select a random sample of individuals since the students had already assigned to
four different classes. The solution to this case is that instead of randomly selecting the
individuals, the researcher chooses classes for investigation. This method has two

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teachers in order to make pre-reading stage of the reading lesson more interesting.

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