SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

ĐỀ TÀI:
" HIỆU QUẢ CỦA VIỆC SỬ DỤNG CÁC TRUYỆN NGẮN NHẰM
GIÚP PHÁT TRIỂN KỸ NĂNG ĐỌC HIỂU CỦA HỌC SINH
THPT"

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Part 1: Introduction
1. Reason for choosing the topic.
It is assumed that the more students read, the better readers they become. Therefore,
establishing students’ habits of reading is very necessary, especially in second language
learning.
Being aware of the importance of learning reading skill, authors of new English 10
have chosen interesting topics for reading lessons with the aim to promote students in
reading and improve their reading comprehension. However some of them are not
familiar with students' genre and reading in the text book only is not enough to enhance
students' interest in reading and reading comprehension. Thonis, (1970) suggested:
Comprehension skills depend upon two major factors: the background of
experiences, from which concepts have been acquired, and the speed, accuracy, and
richness of meanings which students bring to word recognition. The advancement of
skill in understanding what is read receives major emphasis during the intermediate
and high school years. As students become more efficient readers, the written
language which they meet in books becomes a source for larger vocabularies, for
increased knowledge, and for deeper comprehension of themselves and the world
around them.
Thus beside the reading texts in the text book students need to read more outside
class room to enrich their vocabulary as well as their background knowledge. That means
students must read extensively.

The study is to find down if the using short stories in teaching reading helps
motivate students at My Hao high school in reading and improving their reading abilities.
3. Research questions
This action research aims at answering the following research questions:
1. What are the students' problems and causes of the problems in reading lessons?
2. What are students' attitude and preferences for the using short stories in teaching
reading?
a. How do they find the short story reading activities that teacher applied?
b. What benefits do they think the short story reading activities bring them?
c. What short story reading activities do they like most to comprehend the story
more effectively?
3. Does the using short stories in teaching reading help students improve their reading
comprehension?
4. Scope of the study
The research aims at applying the using short stories in teaching reading to grade 10
students at My Hao high school. The subjects of the study are 50 students of class 10A3
(school year: 2011-2012) at My Hao high school including 22 males and 28 females. The
age of those 50 students ranges from 16 to 17. Hopefully, the findings of the study may
be applied in teaching reading to students at My Hao high school and other high schools
in Vietnam.
5. Methods of the study
• Methodology:
I designed this action research since it is the problem in my own class and I would
like to improve my students' reading skill. It is a practical action because its purpose is to

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research a specific school situation with a view toward improving practice reading, to
focus on a small-scale research project, to focus narrowly on a specific problem and to be


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read the materials because they are interested in it. Another strategy that is used to
promote intrinsic motivation is to find topics that students are interested in learning more
about and have the students research it (Guthrie, Solomon, 1997;43). The students want
to read the material because they are so determined to learn more about the subject; they
will also want to work hard at it because they picked it out (Hunt, Lyman, 1997;21).
Beside intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation is not less important. In this study,
extrinsic motivation is considered as teacher's role in enhancing students to read as well
as sustaining students' interest in reading. Harmer (2003) said that "clearly a major factor
in the continuance of a student's motivation is the teacher." The teachers are the people
who know best about their students, they will know how to enhance their students'
interest in reading and when to provide help to them. The teachers are also students'
friends who share their difficulties in learning and from those difficulties they will find
the most suitable method of teaching to increase and direct their students' motivation.
Thus, to make our students want to read, besides giving them interesting lessons
with pleasant learning environment and various activities we need to provide them
materials that they are interested in or let them choose their own materials to read.
3. Motivation in leaning reading short stories.
3.1. Short stories and their benefits to high school students
When students are let to read materials that they are interested in they will want to
read more. Wells. C (1980;78) stated that “If reading has been pleasurable because the
students have been able to identify successfully (emotionally and intellectually) with the
text, and to organize the material, then the students will want to read more. This desire
will set off a chain reaction which will lead to more reading, and the more the student
reads, the better he will read.”
To high school students, short stories seem to be the most suitable materials for extra
reading activities. Erkaya (2005;75) said "short stories usually have a beginning, middle

3.2. Choosing the suitable short stories for high school students.
As it is mentioned above, of literacy genres, short stories seem to be the most
suitable one to use in crowded class due to its shortness. However, there is no strict rule
to determine the length of short stories; as well as very short stories, there are longer
ones. Therefore, it is the duty of the teacher to choose a story short enough to handle with
course hours. "The shortness of the text is important for the students because they will
see that they can read, understand and finish something in English, and it will give the
students a feeling of achievement and self - confidence" (Zerrin Eren, 2004.98) To high
school students with the pre-intermediate language level the teacher can choose short
stories which have from two hundreds words to three hundred words in length.
Beside the length of the work, there are some other important criteria that must be
considered while choosing the text. Hill (1994;45) points out the basic criteria to be kept
in mind while choosing a literary text as follows:
- The need and abilities of the students
- The linguistic and stylistic level of the text
- The amount of background information required for a true
- Appreciation of the materials.

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In addition, the vocabulary and sentence structure of the short stories to be studied
must be suitable to the level of the students. The short stories with archaic, slang, foreign
words, and allusions, having sentences imitating the speech of a particular locality or
ignorant people or foreigners must be avoided. Similarly, very long sentences are difficult
for students to understand. As students will not understand these sentences and words,
they will get bored and not read the work. Therefore, before giving the short story, the
teacher should decide the readability of the text.
Moreover, High school students are at teenage age, thus, the short stories for
teenagers are important sources for teacher. Sandra Lee McKay (2001: 322) and Wilga

the information asked and checked are different according to the different reading topics
in each term. So the researcher should be sure that the tests are relatively equal in the
level of difficulty.
Through the two tests, the researcher can find the differences in the students' reading
comprehension; compare the results before and after the time of doing action plan.

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Chapter 3: DATA ANALYSIS
1. Implementing the action plan
How was the action steps implemented?
The action plan was implemented for 16 weeks from week one to week sixteen of
the second term at the fifth period on Friday (Normally, students learn 4 periods on
Friday, the researcher had asked for the permission of the school’s leaders about this).
The subjects were the students of class 10A3 at My Hao high school. The teacher was the
researcher of the study. Besides, one more teacher was invited to observe the class in the
first period of each unit during the time of action plan implementation. During the sixteen
weeks of the action plan implementation the students were provided with different short
stories and comprehension tasks that correspond with the topic of the reading in the text
book, students’ knowledge, interests and levels of proficiency. (Appendix 6)
2. Collecting data from survey
What was the students’ reading comprehension like after action plan
implementation?
After sixteen weeks of action plan implementation, some data about the students’
attitude and opinion about the using short stories in teaching reading were gathered
through questionnaire 2 and the class observation checklists in which the students’
comprehension was objectively assessed by another observer. She had the observation
sheet for her observation including the way the teacher taught the students, the reading
short story activities the teacher applied and the students’ attitudes towards the teacher’s

before the time of action plan complementation.
And the results of the pre- test were presented as follow:

Discussion:

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As can be seen from the information above, most of the students got low marks
(38%). The number students getting excellent marks is very low ( only 8%). In the
previous term, the students did not comprehend much in reading lessons and the cause of
the students' low comprehension in reading lessons was that they lack of vocabulary,
background knowledge and motivation for reading.
4.2. Post test data
The post test was done by students in class 10A3 (2011-2012) at My Hao high
school. The researcher had chosen some reading texts from My Hao high school test
library and built up a reading comprehension test which suits with students' language
level and covers the topics that the students had learnt after implementing the action plan
for 16 weeks. The test was taken at the end of the second term after the time of action
plan complementation.
And the results of the post test were presented as follow:

Discussion
As can be seen from the information above, most of the students got higher marks
than those of the pretest. During 16 weeks of the second term, students were given a lot
of stories by teachers. Therefore, their reading skill has improved much. As a result of
this, the number of students getting bad marks decreased remarkably (only 4%) and the
number of students getting excellent marks increased sharply (66%)

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associates (1980; 1983) developed previews for short stories that had, as one component,
the building of prior knowledge important to understanding the selection. Hayes and
Tierney (1982) found that presenting background information related to the topic to be
learned helped readers learn from texts regardless of how that background information
was presented or how specific or general it was. Alvarez (1990) used case-based
instruction to develop students' abilities to assemble and incorporate different knowledge
sources in memory. He taught them how to employ thematic organizers and hierarchical
concept mapping in their reading.
Additionally, research clearly emphasizes that for learning to occur, new information
must be integrated with what the learner already knows (Rumelhart, 1980).
It appears that providing students with strategies to activate their prior knowledge
base or to build a base if one does not exist is supported by the current research and this
is one way teachers can have a positive influence on comprehension in their classrooms.
1.2. Lack of vocabulary
Most people feel that there is a common sense relationship between vocabulary and
comprehension--messages are composed of ideas, and ideas are expressed in words. The
crucial role of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension has been well recognized
in first language (L1) situations and this has appeared to be true of second language (L2)
settings as well because a strong vocabulary is the foundation for reading comprehension.
In fact, vocabulary is the foundation of all areas of literacy listening, speaking, reading,
and writing. (Trisha Callella. 2004. Teaching vocabulary to improve reading
comprehension. Creative teaching pressed).
By high school, students with a diversity of backgrounds and skills are immersed in
content area instruction. Yet all students, and particularly those who are struggling, are
confronted with vocabulary and concepts that are unfamiliar or misunderstood. Those
misunderstandings interfere with comprehension of content area curriculum.
That is the reason why the vocabulary enrichment for students becomes necessary.
Many researches have been carried out to study the possibility of learning vocabulary
through reading especially through extensive reading in a second language.
Day, R., & Bamford, J. (1998) also found that

text only provides directions for listeners or readers about how they should retrieve or
construct meaning from their own, previously acquired knowledge. This previously
acquired knowledge is called the reader’s background knowledge, and the obviously
acquired knowledge structures are called schemata.
Schema theory suggests that we need to utilize information not explicitly contained
in the text to comprehend more texts. The knowledge we carry around in our head is
organized into interrelated patterns. These are constructed from our previous experience
of the experimental world and guide us as we make sense of new experiences. They also
enable us to make predictions about what we might expect to experience in given context
and there is no doubt that extra reading activities are of great help in widening learners’

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background knowledge. However, deciding the right reading materials for the right
students and at the suitable time is not easy to all teachers. Therefore, teaching
methodology plays a very important role in language teaching in general and in teaching
reading in particular.
3. Reading material factors
Material is considered to be one of the kernel elements in the model of language
teaching and learning. O'Malley and Chammot (1990:210) state that:
The objectives of language materials are to develop academic English language
skills through content-base instruction, to develop understanding and skills in content
areas, and to teach students learning strategies that will
help
them
become
autonomous learners of both language and content.
Because of this, appropriate reading materials must effectively assist students in
developing their reading skills. Teachers are advisable to design or at least know how to

This habit is very necessary for them in practicing their reading skills because “the more
they read the better readers they become.”
Thus, the situation investigated in the research calls for the applications of using
short story reading activities in teaching reading.
PART 3. Conclusion
It is apparent that students at My Hao high school often encounter several difficulties
when dealing with the reading skill. One of these is the lacking of background
knowledge, motivation, and vocabulary therefore students often find it hard to
comprehend the reading text so the reading comprehension of them is still rather low.
There are several factors affecting the students’ reading comprehension in learning
reading in general and in reading a specific text in particular. From the data analysis, it is
important to spot that teacher’ teaching method, especially in establishing the students the
habit of outside class reading, have great impact on the students’ comprehension of the
reading text. Although the teachers as well as the students are fully aware of the
important role of extra reading activities, the chosen reading material and reading
comprehension activities are very necessary.
To improve the situation, the teachers should take into consideration such things as
teaching and learning condition, the reading material, reading activities, learning
strategies and students’ preference… In more details, using short story reading activities
as extra reading activities appropriately and flexibly, encouraging students’ internal
factors … are feasible and effective solutions to apply in teaching reading.
Finally, it is hope that the study will make an especially significant contribution to
the improvement and renovation of the current situation of teaching and learning English
at My Hao high school.

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