Teaching reading through the integration of related multi- subjects

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Why was the research paper written?
Nowadays, Vietnam, on the process of the international integration and
cooperation, has been expanding the relations in many areas and creating
fundamental premise for industrialization and modernization. The premise, in
its turn, has made Viet Nam confident to join international life in both scope
and scale. English is a powerfully communicative tool that helps to make
these relations better. It is widely used in such a variety of areas as science,
international business, information technology, transportation, and so on.
Seeing how important English is, the Ministry of Education and Training has
been carrying out the renovation in English books with the communicative
method focusing on teaching four skills as listening, speaking, reading and
writing. These skills are taught integrally by the other language components as
grammar or structure, vocabulary and pronunciation.
Currently, with the project of comprehensive renovation process in the
curriculum and books adopted by the Congress, the Ministry continues to
order teachers to make reforms in teaching methods and testing, assessing to
meet the trend of developing students' ability. It is for this goal that the
integration of various subjects in teaching in schools has been reinforcing and
encouraging. English is one of the school subjects that is in need of this
method. English teachers, therefore, have to change their traditional teaching
method "mono-subject" to the new one "related multi-subjects". This aims at
training a future generation to be more skillful and to be able to have a more
comprehensive knowledge.

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Teaching reading through the integration of related multi- subjects

Teaching reading through the integration of related multi- subjects

applications to gather information, students develop critical thinking and
writing skills. The integration of diverse subjects invites inquiry, construction,
communication, and expression. This research also supports demands that
educators prepare our young people to become independent and life long
learners. In this sense, the majority of suggested activities presuppose that the
students acquire the necessary learning skills for a given activity on their own
and not through orthodox methods of skills delivery. The teacher will have to
adopt the role of a resource person who encourages independent learning.
3. How is the research paper organized?
This research paper has five parts:
Part A: Introduction
Part B: Development of teaching reading through the integration of
related multi-subjects.
Part C: Demonstration of a typical example using the integration
of related multi-subjects in teaching reading.
Part D: The results and the effect of the study application
Part E: Conclusion
Despite much time and care have been given to writing this research paper, the
research paper at which I have worked very hard to make it as best I could, I
realized I could hardly make it to perfection without any shortcomings and
mistakes. I gratefully acknowledge all the respectable professors, the fellowteachers, the readers who have contributed to my research paper with
suggestions, criticisms, and information and help me have a better research
paper for the next time. Appreciation is also elicited to the pilot teachers who

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Teaching reading through the integration of related multi- subjects


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Teaching reading through the integration of related multi- subjects

When designing an English lesson, teachers easily discover to what its content
belongs so as to integrated suitable items.
If the lesson is about geographical names like Unit 6 "An excursion" English
10, Unit 16 "Historical places" English 10, teachers can exploit the
geography, the weather, human characteristics, fauna and flora ... in Hanoi.
(Geography and Biology are mentioned). Students will certainly like engaging
in activities because Hanoi with Huong pagoda, Thay pagoda is the tourist
destination most of them visited.
With the lesson about the marvelous structure of history and culture, Unit 16
"The wonders of the world" English 11, history or geography, arts integration
is fully used. Who built that structure? Where? What is its geographic
location? Is it about any famous historian or historical events? ...
The lessons about sports, Unit 12 "The Asian Games" English 11, Unit 14
"The world cup" English 10, Unit 12 "Water sports" and Unit 13 "The 22 nd
SEA games" English 12 gets much more exciting if teachers skillfully
stimulate students' interest in showing their experience in favorite sports and
talking about the advantages of regularly practicing sports.
Life-skills integration is more and more efficient and competent in such
lessons as Unit 2 "Personal experiences" English 11, Unit 1 "Home life"
English 12. Here students will be able to know how to behave better in bad
situations, what to do to help busy parents.
Even in Unit 5 "Technology and you" English 10, informatics integration, the
way to use culturally social web is imported. The class will be motivated with
the so-called mail, chit-chat or facebook ...

1"READING" as an example. In this lesson, Math, History, Geography and
Physics are integrated.

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Teaching reading through the integration of related multi- subjects

Part 1: LEAD-IN
(geography integration)
Item 1: Video clip (wonders of the world)
Item 2: A map (Giza, Egypt)
Questions:
What can you see from the map? (Ss: Giza)
Where is it located?
Part 2: WHILE-READING
(physics integration)
Item 3: Video clip (the process of building the pyramid)
Question:
1. What are the three things used to help people carry big
stones up to the pyramid?
Ss: ramp, roller, water
2. What did people use "ramp, roller and water" to carry the
stones for?
Ss: to reduce friction
Item 3: a photo (reduce friction)

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students towards the use of this method to teach reading. The interview was
carried out among all the students of all levels. I collected some responses to
the questions below:
Question 1: Do you know what the integration of related multi-subjects is?
Question 2: What are the effects of involving knowledge on you in
learning reading?
Question 3: What are the difficulties in learning with so many subjects at
the same time?
Question 4: Do you want to learn reading with the related multi-subjects?
Here are the students’ responses to the four questions:

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Teaching reading through the integration of related multi- subjects

Question 1: All of students’ answers were YES. Some students added
that this expression were quite the same to what they thought of them before.
At least, after the lesson, students knew some main features of the process of
integrating many subjects into one lesson.
Question 2: With this question, there were different answers. Student 1
said that she could remember the knowledge in the whole easily for a longer
time after the lesson. Student 2 added that when she did any kind of test, learn
any subjects, she imagined the knowledge provided and tried to recollect her
knowledge. In short, students agreed that the integration of related multisubjects helped them a lot in learning. Moreover, there was one student added
that he felt more enjoyable to learn with this integration because it was new,
funny and creative. He loved showing his creativity in doing the task given by
the teacher.
Question 3: For the next questions, student 4 thought that she was not
good at imagination and summarizing the knowledge. It took her more time to

years of experience, I have tried my best to save the situation. I renew my
teaching method with effective techniques. As a result, I have harvested
considerable fruits as follows:

Grade
11
10

Students
(Total)
43
43
126
123

T1/T2

Poor

Weak

Average

Good

Excellent

T1
T2
T1

15
2
14

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Teaching reading through the integration of related multi- subjects

Above is the comparison of students’ learning result in the first test (T1) done
at the beginning of the academic year and the one (T2) in the first-term test.
Obviously there is a noticeable difference between students who were taught
by integrating many subjects into teaching and the ones who were not.
After analyzing the data, I find out that the achievement of the students taught
by my technique is better than that of the one without my technique.
Based on the above statistics and explanations, the achievement in the
experimental class indicated that teaching English using the integration was
effective. Nevertheless, there were still many students who get low marks. I
think that they are really not interested in English and it is difficult for them to
learn the material, because of having no support from their facilities or
because of their lack of awareness of learning English.
PART E: CONCLUSION
Teachers are guides rather than dictators; imposing ideas on students is an oldfashioned teaching method, which is likely to blunt students’ sharpness and
creativeness. Teacher’s guidance or guiding teaching using the technique
mentioned above will work well. An effective technique required flexibility
and creativity. In other words, teaching English using the integration is more
effective than just giving information with "mono-subject", especially in
teaching English. Teachers who process the way to teach with the integration
can create a good atmosphere especially for the students to make them
enjoyable and well motivated in learning English, because of the interesting

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Teaching reading through the integration of related multi- subjects

The last but not the least, all the teachers themselves should be equipped with
advanced training courses in teaching language in the country and outside the
country if possible.

Above is merely a little knowledge, a little experience which I have
accumulated. I do hope it will attract teachers' attention in teaching English.
The follow-up school year, I will try to search for many other methods to
motivate the English classes in which learners can participate with their
enthusiasm and creativity.

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Teaching reading through the integration of related multi- subjects

REFERENCES
1.

Alfred North Whitehead, 1967, The Aim of education, New York:
The Free Press

2.

Articles, Integrating involving diverse subjects into teaching, Vietnam


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1. Why was the research paper written?

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2. What is the actual situation of teaching and learning English?

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and who is the study for?
3. How is the research paper organized?
PART B: Development
1. Theoretical background of the integration of diverse subjects
2. Teaching reading through the integration of related

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5
5
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multi-subjects
PART C: Demonstration

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PART D: The results and the effect of the study application

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