SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO LAI CHÂU
TRƯỜNG PHỔ THÔNG DÂN TỘC NỘI TRÚ TỈNH

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM
To what extent do the activities of Unfinished Story improve Lai Chau
Boarding high school students’ reading sub-skill of predicting outcomes?

Tác giả: Nguyễn Thị Thu Hương
Trình độ chuyên môn: Đại học
Chức vụ: Tổ phó
Nơi công tác: Trường Phổ thông Dân tộc Nội trú tỉnh Lai Châu

Lai Châu, ngày 20 tháng 5 năm 2013
1


PROBLEM
I. REASONS FOR SELECTING TOPICS
I have been teaching English for more than ten years. I love teaching
and I want to be a good teacher. In other words, I want to help the students
achieve the goal they hold in their lives. I want to perform what is required of
a teacher – controller, assessor, organizer, prompter, etc.
I am in charge of teaching English for grade 11 students. I have to teach
all 4 skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Is reading important actually? For many people, reading is the most
important and essential skill to master. According to Carrell (1984), “for many
students, reading is by far the most important of the four skills, particularly
English as a second or a foreign language”. It is not only a ‘goal’ but also an
‘essential tool’ in the development of each person. As Villamin (1984: 3 ) puts
it: " Reading is the key that unlocks the door to the world of enlightenment
and enjoyment."

Students acquire knowledge faster, more realistic, more natural, longer
remembered all.
PROBLEM SOLVING
I. RATIONALE
1. DEFINITIONS
1. 1. What is reading?
There are many definitions about reading. Usually, it is related to the
involvement of the knowledge of the reader and the ideas given by the writer
within a specific context. Or in another shorter definition it can be the
“dealing with language message in written or printed form” (Urquhart and
Weir 1998: 14) which means that reading sometimes is associated with
symbols or figures such as maps, time-tables. However, they finally came up
with the definition that “reading is the process of receiving and interpreting
information encoded in language form via medium of print.” (Urquhart and
Weir 1998: 22)
Nuttall (1982) discussed some assumptions about reading which, in his
opinion, were not appropriate. One emphasized that reading focuses on
recognizing the printed words that he reasoned was only for early reading.
Another assumption insisted that reading should deal with pronunciation and
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speaking and he said that it suits also only for early readers. In general the
common words which should appear in reading process are “understand”,
“interpret”, “meaning” and “sense”.
So, it can be drawn that reading definitions relates to meaning
extracting. It is true that people reading for many different purposes. Many
people read for work, study; many others read
for transport needs, entertainment or whatever. Reading in a foreign language
or English is, besides, to do “a linguistic exercise” also to get “meaning out of

reading. According to Goodman (1988), Reading is a psycholinguistic process
in that it starts with a linguistic surface representation encoded by a writer and
ends with meaning which the reader constructs. There is thus an essential
interaction between language and thought in reading. The writer encodes
thought as language and the reader decodes language to thought.
Nunan adds “ Reading is an interactive process between what a reader
already knows about a given topic/ subject and what the writer writes”
(Nunan, 1989)
Reading means to provide the learners with the ability to read written
materials in English language, such as books, articles, brochures and other
materials related to language and language instruction. The learners are
expected to master the ability of anticipating, predicting outcomes,
sequencing,

skimming,

scanning,

understanding

relationships

within

paragraphs, and organizing the text.
1. 2. Reading theories
Through many discussions, debates and researches, it is now agreed
among language specialists that there are three common reading models in
term of reading process. They are bottom-up, top-down and interactive. All
these three, however, need the support of schemata theory to make them

words, students have to use bottom-up model, but to understand what is
behind the lines they have to activate their world knowledge, which means
they top-down approach has to be used in order to get the understanding.
In general, whatever the model the reader uses in processing a reading,
there is one thing he has to rely on; that is his schemata or “organized
knowledge of the world, provides much of the basic for comprehending,
learning and remembering the ideas in stories and texts” (Ruddell R. B et al.
1994). If his schema about the topic of the text is so limited it will be not easy
for him to understand the text or he will have to try hard to digest new concept
or information from the text. In return, if his content schema about the topic is
big enough, the reading process for the text will be fast and the likely to relate
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previous knowledge and new one is also faster. Let look at a simple example
in the sentence “She broke her ankle after jumping from the first floor
window.” If you are coming form a culture with the conventional concept
about the first floor as the ground floor, this sentence would seems odd to you.
However, even if you are not familiar with that type of construction, you have
prior knowledge about that concept, your schemata would allow you to
acknowledge the first floor as the floor above the ground floor and that
sentence would be just fine for you. So, schema theory is also another aspect
that worth to look at in the reading process.
With those mention models about reading, bottom-up, top-down,
interactive models and schema theory, reading instructors can now prepare for
themselves strategies and skills in teaching reading more effectively.
2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
2. 1. Unfinished stories
Unfinished stories are the stories which are made incompletely or
naccomplishedly in order to create the curiorsity of readers.

technique typically used is to have children read a part of a story, discuss what
they read, and then either write or tell what they think will happen next (P.52).
Predicting uses the internal organization of a text and is the strategy of
guessing or predicting what is coming next in a text by means of specific cues
contained within the text, ie
- grapho-phonic (words, sounds, individual word structures)
- syntactic ( grammatical structures)
- semantic ( content words, the use of the reader’s existing
understanding of the content) Ian, G. McPhail (1993: 74)
Davies, F. (1995: 160) said that prediction is considered as a means of
investigating the process of reading. It is an activity that has rich potential at
all levels of reading development and in all contexts. The objective of
prediction is to have children use their prior knowledge to predict what
happens in the story depending on their schema of the story structure, the title
of the story, the characters and the setting of the story.
According to Sadler, C, R. (2001, p.41), prediction strategy acts as a
motivator and gives purpose to the reading. It also allows students to be
honest in their prediction and to do a self-evaluation. Students are able to

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make predictions based on their prior knowledge. Comprehension is
determined through a logical prediction.
I hope that the finding of action will help Lai Chau boarding high
school students overcome difficulties in reading and shed some light on my
own practices.
II. STATUS OF THE PROBLEM
My school was established in 2004 with only four classes and a few
teachers at that time. Now it has 12 classes with 380 students and 32 teachers


Boarding high school

test and 2 post

school.

students’ reading sub-

tests)

(N= 40)

skill of predicting

2. Lesson
9

Subjects
Grade 11

Statistical tools
. Frequency
count.
. Percentage.
. 1-tail t-test.
. 2-tail t-test.


outcomes?

comprehension
skills.

The use of
unfinished stories

Operational Definition

Operational Definition

Teacher divides the story into strips,

Students’ ability to predict what

gives one by one, asks them to read it would happen next based on the
and guess what will happen next.

contextual clues of the previous
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paragraphs. This will be measured by
pre and post reading tests.

3. Data collection procedures
The data collection procedures are illustrated in the diagram below.
Grade 11 students at
Lai Chau high school
(n = 40)


unfinished
stories

Observatio
n

Use of
unfinished
stories

Reading - test 1

one
month

No use of
unfinished
stories

Observatio
n

Use of
unfinished
stories

Reading - test 2

Compare the results of two groups
11

7-10
10= 25%
30= 75%

test

11B1

40 students
Score
1-6
7-10
20=
20=
50%

50%

3.1. Selecting the subjects
A reading pre-test will be given to the whole class. Only those who
score less than 7 over 10 will be selected to do the experiment.
The students selected will be assigned to two groups (A and B) which
are equal in number and gender. Each group is 20 students (10 boys and 10
girls). The students in group A will be taught reading comprehension with
comprehension questions only and students in group B will be taught with
unfinished stories.
3.2. Collecting data
After one month, (3 periods/ week) I will have students in the two
groups do the same first post-test, at the same time and the same time duration
(45-minute test) and score their tasks. To be more reliable, I will ask my

- Teacher poses sign post questions for students to answer.
1. How old was she?
2. Who was the pop star?
3. What would happen next?
Paragraph 2:
My father knew this, so on my birthday he gave me some money so
that I could buy the hat for myself. I was extremely excited and decided to go
to the shop at once. I got on the bus and sat down next to a schoolboy about
my age.
1. Did she and the schoolboy talk to each other?
2. How could she get money to buy the red hat?
3. What would happen next?
- Teacher continues the procedure for each paragraph until the lesson
finishes.

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To Group A: I don’t apply unfinished stories to Group A. They will be taught
reading comprehension in traditional way.
(Please, see appendix 1, 2)
3.2.2. The reading tests
Three reading tests will be used for the research, one pre-test and two
post-tests to collect the necessary data and students’ test papers are raw
materials for analysis. Each test will last 45 minutes. All of them will be
designed in the same way to make sure that their results are valid and reliable.
They will consist of one passage with the same length, the same text type, and
ten questions including five multiple-choice questions and five open-ended
ones. All the questions focusing on predicting outcomes are based on the
passage. The two groups of students will do these three tests.

4.1. Descriptive statistics
The cube chart or bar chart will be used to summarize the general data
of the three tests’ results to see the relationship between the variables.
4.2. Inferential statistics
Besides the descriptive statistics, I will use inferential statistics with
percentage to compare the students’ improvements in each tail and then the
two tails together to see whether the difference is large enough to be
significant.
5. RESEARCH SCHEDULE
Stage
Activity
1
- Preparing the reading pre-test.

Date
1 week (Nov 5th to 12th , 2011)
st

- Having students do the pre-test.
- Scoring the test and choosing the
2

subjects in the two classes.
- Using unfinished story for class Next four weeks (Nov 13th ,
B and comprehension questions for 2011 to 13th Dec, 2012)

3

class A.
- Preparing the first reading post- 6th week (14th Dec to 21st ,

- Discussion and findings

12th week (1st Feb to 8th, 2012)
13th week (9th Feb to 16th,

- Writing report

2012)
14th week (17th Feb to 23rd,
2012)

IV. THE EFFECT OF EXPERIENCE INITIATIVES
After applying the new method in teach reading in English, it is clearly
seen that students were more fascinated in the lessons with unfinished stories.
Students can complete the story by answering questions excitingly. I find that
my students become more interesting and, the quality of lectures also become
effective than the one with old teaching method. In addition the new method
creates a good environment to help students communicate in English
creatively.
In just a short time applying this new method, I noticed students are
braver, more creative in thinking and communication. Their memory are
enhanced as well.
Teaching this new reading strategy "predicting - outcome" is likely to
be widely used in schools and for students different subjects.
CONCLUSION
I. THE LESSONS LEARNED
I have learned a lot trying and using this new teaching method.
For my own conclusion, to be an effective instructor, each needs good
preparation of the lesson before teaching. The goals or requirements of the
lesson should be targeted right at the beginning. Also, students' need, ability

- Should have professional workshops with participants from not only
the school to create chances for English staff to share experiences and to learn
from one another.

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References.
Anderson, N. (1999). Exploring Second Language Reading. Newbury House
Teacher Development
(Collins English Dictionary 2009 © William Colins Son and Co.Ltd)
Davies, F. (1995). Penguin English Applied Linguistics. Introducing
Reading. London and USA: Penguin Books Ltd.
Denive et al.1987. Research in Reading English as a Second Language.
Washington, D.C, USA: TESOL
Feuerstein, T. & Schcolnik, M (1997). Enhancing Reading Comprehension
in the Language Learning Classroom. Alta Book Center, Publishers 14
Adrian Court BurlinKame, California 94010 USA.
Gunderson, Lee. 1987. ESL literacy Instruction – a Guide Book to Theory
and Practice. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents.
Goodman, Kenneth S. (ed) 1968 The Psycholinguistic Nature of the Reading
Process. Michigan: Wayne State University Press.
Ian, G. McPhail. 1993. Teaching and Learning Stratergies for ESL Learners
R-12 Education department of South Australia.

18


Karlin, Robert. 1984. Teaching Reading in High School: Improving
Reading in the Content Area; New York, Harper & Row

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Inside it, I saw a wad of dollar notes exactly like the ones my father had
given me. I quickly looked into my own bag – the notes had gone! I was sure
that the boy was a thief. He had stolen my money.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5. I didn’t want to make a fuss, so I decided just to take my money back from
the schoolboy’s bag, without saying a word about it. So I carefully put my
hand into the boy’s bag, took the notes and put them in my own bag.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6. With the money I bought the pretty hat of my dreams. When I got home, I
showed it to my father.
“How did you pay for it?” he asked.
“With the money you gave me for my birthday, of course, Dad” I replied.
“Oh? What’s that then?” he asked, as he pointed to a wad of dollar notes on
the table.
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Can you imagine how I felt then?

Appendix 2
Dinner Party
Mr and Mrs Smith both loved cooking. Mr Smith
also wanted a better job in his company. They
decided it was time for a dinner party. 21
Mr Smith
phoned his new boss Mr Plummer and invited him
and his wife to dinner on Friday night


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On Friday afternoon, Mr and Mrs Smith spent a
long time cooking a delicious dinner. They
prepared fresh salmon, filled with prawns and


Question
number
1
2
3
4

Reading sub-skills

Question

types
Identifying main facts and details
True/false
Identifying cause and effect
Matching
Identifying sequence of events
Ordering
Inferring meaning from contextual MCQ
23

Level

No. of

LC
IC
RO
IC

SD – Strongly Disagree

S/
N
1
2

Items

N – Not sure

SA

I can improve predicting outcomes, one of the reading
sub-skills through the activities.
I can understand the text and improve reading subskills of predicting outcomes,
24

A

N

D SD


3
4
5
6
7

Reading sub-skill of predicting outcomes and
learning benefits
25