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Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy - K13U

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH AND
MODERN LANGUAGES

GRADUATION PAPER
B.A Degree in English

SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH UNFAMILIAR
WORDS IN READING COMPREHENSION FOR STUDENTS
OF ENGLISH FACULTY, HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

Supervisor ề.

Le Phuong Thao, M.A

Student :

Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy

Date of birth: 29/09/1988
Course :

2006 - 2010

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helps me much in collecting and classifying my knowledge which I have studied. To
finish paper, I have worked under extremely high responsibility. I received many
supports from teachers and friends. I cannot accomplish this task without tìieừ help.
First of all, I would like to express my appreciation to all the teachers of
English faculty, Hanoi open University for teaching me to be a well-educated student.
I have learnt so many tilings from what they taught me. They have made favourable
conditions for me to study at school during my precious four years here.
Secondly, I would like to give special thanks to Ms. Le Phuong Thao, my
supervisor, for both her positive response to my ideas for this paper and her advice
that helped me to complete it. I would not complete my graduation paper without her
enthusiastic instructions and correction.
Besides, I also would like to thank my friends and all the students who helped
me implement my study.
Finally yet important, I am very thankful to my family and my boyfriend for
their spữitual and financial supports to help me finish my course in Hanoi Open
University.

Hanoi, May 2009
Nguyễn Thị Thu Thủy

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION lẵl
Rationale:
Reading is an important tool for people of many societies allowing them to
access information or knowledge. Everyone needs reading skills for various purposes
as survival, broadened knowledge and pleasure. Reading is a basic skill not only

lế2 Aims of the study:

It is obvious that reading plays an important role in our life. No worker can
work well without reading documents and no student can study without reading
books. Yet, we always have trouble with unfamiliar words in reading. The objective
of the study is to bring out some strategies which are helpful in dealing with
unfamiliar words in reading comprehension for students of English faculty, Hanoi
open University. In this study, the author would like to focus on finding what
difficulties students usually meet when encountering unfamiliar words in reading and
from that point, the author would like to bring out some effective strategies to help
students learning English as a foreign language in general and the students of English
faculty at HOU in particular to overcome tìieừ difficulties. To help students deal with
unfamiliar words in reading comprehension, this study focused on the following main

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Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy - K13U

points:
•

Overview of basic knowledge on reading comprehension and

unfamiliar words in reading
•

Difficulties made by unfamiliar words in reading comprehension for

researching also contributed much to the completion of this thesis.

1Ệ5 Design of the study:
The study is divided into five chapters:

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Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy - K13U

• Chapter I: Introduction
• Chapter II: Literature Review
• Chapter III: The study
• Chapter IV: The finding and discussion
• Chapter V: Conclusion

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
2ềl Reading Comprehension:
2.1.1 Definition of Reading:
Joe Cortina and Janet Elder (2000) defined reading as a form of thinking in
Opening Doors - Understanding college reading: “It is your brain that does the
reading, not your eyes. Your eyes merely transmit images to the brain for it to
interpret” (12,75). To understand this, we consider a blind person reading Braille, a
system of printing for the blind, in this case, the finger - tips transmit input to the
brain. Thus, Joe and Janet highly preciate the importance of brain or thinking in
reading. It also means that meaning resides in the reader’s mind, not in symbols
printed on a page. It is the readers who construct meaning by associating theữ
knowledge and experience with what is on the printed page. Different readers,

will not get the practice they need to become fluent or efficient readers. Therefore,
reading also means developing and maintaining the motivation to read.
In general, reading, like other terms, is defined in many different ways
depend on each person’ view and his/her study purpose. Hence, it is not easy to give
a completely exact definition on this term. However, a definition can be summarized
basing on above definitions is that: Reading is a complex process in which written or
printed material is decoded by readers in order to get writer’s message.
2.1.2 Definition of Reading Comprehension:
The term “comprehension” is offered in Webster’s College Dictionary (2008)
is “the capcity of the mind to perceive and understand” or “power to grasp ideas ”
from the written text. In other words, reading comprehension is a highly interactive
process that takes place between a reader and a text. Individual readers will bring
variable levels of skills and experiences to these interactions. These include language
skills, cognitive resources and world knowledge. Any act of reading occurs within a
particular sociocultural and emotional context. This consists of elements such as the
readers’ home culture, theữ previous experiences of reading and being read to, their
expectations that reading should carry meaning, their motivation, their view of
themselves as a reader, the purpose for reading the text, the cultural value placed on
reading and the reading environments the reader experiences.
According to Hulstijn (1993), the word comprehension has its roots in Latin:
comprehendere means to seize. In the Latin derived language of
French, from which many English words come, the verb comprendre means to

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relax and de-stress for both children and adults. Reading can transport people to
different countries and cultures, or it can take us on a great adventure. Reading

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should be viewed as a pleasurable activity - as a source of entertaining tales and
useful and interesting factual information. If we need a few moments to relax after a
hard day, reading is a wonderful way to do so. Through books, besides, children can
also learn about people and places from other parts of the world, improve their
understanding of and concern for all of humanity. Reading can provide children with
endless hours of fun and entertainment. Stories can free up imaginations and open up
exciting new words of fantasty or reality. They allow children to dream and may give
them a good start on the road to viewing reading as a lifelong source of pleasure.
It is also found that another reading benefit that shows the importance of
reading is that reading can actually help to enhance our brain power. Not only is
reading a required skill to complete school and then university it is also a needed
skill in adult hood. The ability to read and learn new things through out our life
keeps our brain young and health. As we read, we stimulate the brain, and there are
some studies that even show that people who read on a regular basis are less likely to
end up dealing with problems like Alzheimer’s Disease. It is also observed that
children and teengagers who love reading have comparatively higher IQs. The ability
to learn about new subjects and find helpful information on anything from health
problems to more academic research into science or the arts depends on the ability to
read. Recent researches has shown that good readers stand out from the rest because
of theữ improved cognitive abilities. They can think creatively. It improves theữ

searching for (key words and names). We “see” every item on the page, but we don’t
necessarily read the pages. We ignore anything we are not looking for. Thus, when
we discover the key words being searched for, we will be unable to recall the exact
content of the page. Approximate rate of scanning type of reading is 1,500 wpm
(words per minute) or more.
Skimming type of reading: Skimming is a reading skill used to get an
overview of the highlights of the material. We read the material quickly to gain a
general impression and it is not necessary to search for a specific item and key
words. Skimming method is useful to look at chapter/section headings, summaries
and opening paragraphs. The two purposes of skimming are: checking relevance of
text and settting the scene for the more concentrated effort that is to follow, if the text
is useful. A person who uses skimming type of reading has the reading speed at
between 800 to 1,000 wpm.
Light type of reading: Reading for leisure tends to be light reading. This
refers to reading at a pace which feels comfortable, reading with understanding, and
skimming the boring, iưelevant passages. An average light reading speed is 100 200 words per minute. This form of reading does not generally require detailed
concentration.
Word by word type of reading: This type of reading is time consuming and
demands a high level of concentration. Some material is not readily understood and
so it requừes a slow, careful and analytical reading. People use this type of reading

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for unfamiliar words and concepts, scientific formulate. It can take up to an hour just
to read a few lines of text.


Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy - K13U

Table 2.1: Flexible reading
Reading rates

Uses
Approximate rate (wpm)

Rapid reading

300 - 500

For relatively easy material,
when readers want only
important facts or ideas or
for leisure reading.

Average reading

200 - 300

For

textbooks,

complex

magazines and journals and
literature.

importance).

2.1. 5 Reading comprehension strategies:
The term “strategy” refers to “a particular plan for achievement of a goal”
(18, 257). A lot of reading strategies are adopted by the speed reader to accomplish
reader’s goal of fast reading. Reading is not only just pronouncing words but
requires understanding. Most experienced readers use a variety of strategies to
understand text. Five main strategies suggested to ensure good
reading comprehension are: prediction, questioning, clarifying, imagining and
summarisation.

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Prediction: Predicting means anticipating or making educated guesses about
what is coming next as reader reads. Predicting is a natural part of reading and the
first step to successful comprehension, but we may not always do it when we are
reading college textbooks. It could be believed that the ability to predict what a text
entails is the first step to successful comprehension. A reader obtains the first clues to
what a text is about via its title. Together with the opening sentences this can help the
reader decide if the text is appropriate to their purpose (in the case of non-fiction) or
to activate a story schema (in the case of fiction). The good reader then actively looks
for cues to enrich their mental model of the text as reading proceeds. In turn, the
developing representation of the text can be used to set up expectancies at the word,
sentence and text levels. This will facilitate reading fluency and deepen
understanding.

readers monitor tìieừ comprehension as they read and that they take steps to correct
the situation when they are not comprehending.
Most of people think of reading as a simple, passive process. But reading is
actually a very complex process that requires a great deal of active participation on
the part of the reader. Here are some ideas which experts in the field have said about
the reading process:
“What do we read? The message is not something given in advance - or given
at all - but something created by interaction between writers and readers as
participants in a particular communicative situation”. (Roy Haưis in Rethinking
Writing, 2000)
“Reading is asking questions of printed text. And reading with
comprehension becomes a matter of getting your questions answered”. (Frank Smith
in Reading without nonsense, 1997)
“Reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game. It involves an interaction
between thought and language. Efficient reading does not result from precise
perception an identification of all elements, but from skill in selecting the fewest,
most productive cues necessary to produce guesses which are right the first time.
The ability to anticipate that which has not been seen, of course, is vital in reading,
just as the ability to anticipate what has not yet been heard is vital in listening”.
(Kenneth Goodman in Journal of the Reading Specialist, 1967)
“Literacy practices are almost always fully integrated with, interwoven into,
constituted as part of, the very texture of wider practices that involve talk,
interaction, values, and beliefs”. (James Gee in Social Linguistics and Literacies,
1996)
According to above ideas, reading is a process requừes many complex skills
and a proficient reader is a reader who knows how to use them logically. For
example, proficient readers recognize the purpose for reading, approach the reading

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it in a dictionary.
• He can skip unnecessary information while skimming.

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• He is able to read silently without moving his lỉpsỄ
• He is able to differentiate between opinion and facts.
• He can locate the topic sentence in a paragraph.
• He can make a summary of important points.
• He can distinguish between various moods of ứie writer.
• He can recognize the meanings of various graphic signals such as punctuation
marks, etcỄ
This is shown clearly through the following figure:

Reading Activities Performed by skilled Readers
l>Eint

Problem
High Level Piocesses: Oft#nR«Ịulifts

Conscious Awaienassand

strategic

Consumes C o - g n U I • fteadiiW}

Letters

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effortlessly. A proficient reader is a person who “does not have to interrupt his reading
and open the dictionary all” (Deanne Milan).

2ẵ2 Unfamiliar words:
2ễ2ễl Definition of word:
In Webster’s College Dictionary, a word is known as:
“a unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written
representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning, is typically seen as the
smallest such unit capable of independent use, is separated from other such units by
spaces in writing and is often distinguished phonologically, as by accent or pause”.
(18, 412)
A word is the smallest free form or an item that may be uttered in isolation
with semantic or pragmatic content in a language, in contrast to a morpheme, which is
the smallest unit of meaning. A word may consist of only one morpheme (e.g. car),
but a single morpheme may not able to exist as a free form (e.g. the English plural
morpheme -s). Typically, a word will consist of a root or stem, and zero or more
affixes. Words can be combined to create other units of language, such as phrases,
clauses, and sentences. A word consisting of two or more stems joined together form a
compound. A word combined with an already existing word or part of a word form a
portmanteau. (Internet source No.)
Another remarkable definition on word which Leonard Bloomfield introduced
the concept of “Minimal Free Forms” in 1962 is that “Words are thought of as the
smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves. This involes
phonemes - units of sound and lexemes - units of meaning”. However, he also
approves that some written words are not minimal free forms, as they make no sense

Noun, Verb, Adjective,
Adverb

Pronoun, Article,
Preposition, Conjunction,
Demonstrative,
Interjection

Diagram 2.1 : Word structure.
2.2.2 Definition of unfamiliar words:
Reading in its fullest sense involves weaving together word recognition and
comprehension in a fluent manner. However, the fact shows that word


comprehension is not always easy. The first thing students meet when they are
reading is the vocabulary. Many students probably consider that their main problem
in reading is not having a big enough vocabulary. Most students who meet an
unfamiliar word cannot interpret are first likely to ask what it means. If they do not
find out the word’s meaning, they can not go on reading and comprehending the
text. So, what is an unfamiliar word in reading?
A word which is an “unaccustomed” or “unusual” word to readers is called
an unfamiliar word (18, 190). It is unlikely that a student will know every word in a
text and even if he thinks he has seen every word before, it is unlikely that he will
has seen a particular word in its present context. It is therefore necessary to work out
the meaning of unfamiliar words in context and, perphaps, familiar words in new
contexts.
Reading in college refers to reading academic materials with many difficult
words. Students cannot read college textbooks, however, without also facing with
unfamiliar words. An unfamiliar word can be a new word or a familiar word in new
contexts. For example:

not available to understand such sentences definitely struggle with the whole text’s
meaning.
Moreover, the first reaction of encountering an unfamiliar word in reading
comprehension is that students immediately stop to ask other people (friends, teachers
or nearby people) for helping or look it up in the dictionary. This, of course, makes
their reading speed slow. This means students do not save their time when reading or
not gain their reading goal. Slow reading speed also affect on finishing students’ scores
at school.
Another difficulty made by unfamiliar words is lack of interest to reading
comprehension. Reading is not only just pronouncing words but requừes understanding
so understanding what is being read is very important for students in studying or
researching. Reading process interrupted by unfamiliar words means that reading is not
pleasurable or fulfilling. Students will not choose to read, and they will not get the
practice they need to become fluent or efficient readers. Therefore, developing and
maintaining the motivation to read is also affected by unfamiliar words in reading
comprehension.


2ẵ3 Some strategies for dealing with unfamiliar words in reading
comprehension:
2.3.1 Ignoring the unfamiliar words:
When students first meet unfamiliar words in reading, they should ignore them
by using skimming and scanning skills if the unfamiliar words don’t affect tìieừ
reading. These two skills are useful for students to understand the general of a sentence
or a passage as a whole without knowing what every word means.
2.3ếlếl Skimming skill:
Skimming is used to gain a quick overview in order to identify the main idea or
general information of a text, students just past over the text lightly and hastily. When
students are skimming, their eyes begin to slide down a column of words, names,
figures, or phrases they do not actually read each entry. A word, name, figure or phrase

roots. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the symptoms of
bulimia are found in 40 to 50 percent of people with anorexia nervosa. As with
anorexia, the majority of bulimia victims are women, typically in their early
twenties, college-educated, single, and white. Unlike those with anorexia, the
victims of bulimia tend to be of nearly normal weight and have healthy, outgoing
personalities. The greatest difference is that a person with anorexia turns away from
food while a person with bulimia is obsessively drawn to it. It is obvious that there
are important similarities and differences between the eatine disorders bulimia and
anorexia. ” (14,129)
The topic of paragraph which is bulimia and anorexia is located at the last
sentence. As students read the paragraph, they must ask themselves, “What is the
most important point the authors want me to understand about bulimia and
anorexia?’. In spite of lots of unfamiliar technical words, students can find out the
answer to this question, the last sentence, is the stated main idea sentence. This
sentence contains the topic and it is a general statement that tells about the author’s
most important point - bulimia and anorexia.
2.3ếlế2 Scanning skill:
While skimming skill is used to know general information, scanning is the
special technique students should use to find detailed information without
understanding every word’s meaning. Skimming refers to the process of quickly
searching reading material in order to locate specific bits of information.


Scanning involves moving reader’s eyes quickly down the page seeking
specific words and phrases. Reader does not actually read but move the eyes across the
page and by using vertical section of the recognition span is able to cover three or four
lines of print at a movement. When reader reaches the information he needs, he reads it
thoroughly.
Reader probably scan when he searches for a phone number in a telephone
book, goes through the TV guide looking for a program to watch or looks up an

letters in English that always correspond to a single sound, and there is no one
sound that always corresponds to a single letter. English, it is said, has a “deep
orthography”, which basically just means that there are a lot of words that are not
spelled the way they sound (e.g. “colonel” or “choir”). This is illustrated by the
following table that shows the one-to-many relationship that exists between letters
and sounds (phonemes):
Table 2ề2: Letter-sound relationships
Letters
Words that represent different sounds each letter can
make
A
APPLE, AUTHOR, AUTHORITY, ANY, SAID, SAY, ALGAE
B

BOX, LAMB

c
D
E
F
G

CITY, COUNTRY, CHAIR
DOOR, LACKED
BED, BEAD, STEAK, EUREKA, THE, SEW

H

HOLE, PHONE, SHINE, CHORE, CHOIR, HOUR, EXHIBIT


PAT, PHONE, PSYCH, PNEUMATIC
QUEEN, MOSQUITO

R

ROOT, PERRIER

s
T
u

SAND, SUGAR, EASY, AISLE
TAN, THAN, THIN, LATCH, OFTEN

V

w

UNDER, POUND, UNIQUE, TULIP, POUR, AUTHOR,
AUTHORITY, CHURCH, BUSY, DIALOGUE
VINE, VOILA

X

WON, WREN, COW, LOW, AWFUL, FEW, WHICH,
WHOLE, TWO
RELAX, LUXURY, EXECUTIVE, XENON

Y
z

OA

TOAD, BOARD, BROAD

Al

TRAIN, SAID, AISLE, AGAIN, AIR

OUGH

COUGH, THOUGH, THROUGH, THOROUGH, THOUGHT,
ENOUGH

Good readers do not depend primarily on context to identify new words. When
good readers encounter an unknown word, they decode the word, name it, and then