ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study has been finished with the support and encouragement of many people
to whom I am grateful.
First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor,
Mrs. Le Thi Hong Van, M.A, a lecturer of faculty of foreign languages studies at Tay
Nguyen University. With her knowledge and experience in teaching English as well as
great enthusiasm, she has given me a lot of valuable advice, suggestion and
encouragement during my researching process.
Secondly, I would like to give my sincere thanks for the teachers of the faculty of
foreign languages studies, Tay Nguyen University for their useful lectures and
suggestion and my classmates for their support which are very useful for me to finish
this study.
Thirdly, I would like also to express my special thanks to all the teachers and
students at Tran Phu High school for their enthusiastic cooperation in my survey.
Without their help, this study would have been impossible.
Finally, I wish to thank my family, my friends who have encouraged and
supported me during the time of doing this study.

1


ABSTRACT
Reading, one of the four major basic skills in learning English, is taught at high
school through the reading text. And with the necessary need of communicative
approach, the way to teach reading English effectively is improved and changed. With
this purpose, the author carries out a study on the communicative activities in English
reading classes to somewhat helps student to improve their reading skill in particular
and their language competence in general. To investigate this aspect, a study on the
communicative activities applied in the process of teaching reading English is given
and processed at Tran Phu High school. And the study has given some aspects of
students’ attitude towards the communicative activities in reading English lessons.

1.1 Statement of the problem
Language is the most important means for the people to communicate to each
other. English is an international language and furthermore it becomes an official and
effective international communicative language. English is widely used in many fields
of life science, technology, education, etc. as a result, more and more people are
studying English with the hope that they can meet the requirements of social in general
and of their jobs in particular. . According to Jennifer (2013), English has special or
official status in more than 75 countries. It’s spoken as the first language by 375
million people and as the second language by approximately 375 million people.
Estimates suggest that one in every four people is able to speak a little English, with
numbers increasing year-on-year.
English now is a compulsory subject not only in teaching and learning but also in
many important examinations. So that they are not only study English because it is
compulsory but also because they are interested in English and they are aware well of
the importance of English for their job in the future.
4


It is not easy to master a foreign language at all. It requires many sub-skills such
as listening, reading, speaking and writing. Being a receptive skill, reading also has
some certain requirements to the students, not just a process of understanding grammar
structures mechanically. In fact, many students are very good at grammar and
vocabulary but cannot finish the reading tasks successfully.
It can be clearly seen that, there are many way to teaching reading skill, however,
what is the best way to teach effectively? Nowadays, teachers try to teach English in a
communicative way. Communicative activities, therefore, are becoming an essential
part in learning. In real teaching in high school, not many teacher use communicative
activities in English classes, especially in reading lessons. They only teach students
reading skills through mechanical drills in the textbook. Thus the author carries out a
study on the communicative activities in English reading classes to somewhat helps

the study. Firstly, it gives the aims, characteristic and the teacher and learner roles in
CLT. Secondly, we have communicative activities in language teaching and learning
process and characteristics of communicative activities. And finally, it gives definition
of reading, principles for teaching reading in a CLT classroom and types of
communicative activities in reading classes.
Chapter 3: CONTENTS AND METHODOLOGY. This chapter describes the
method used to carry out this study. It is composed 4 main parts: subject of the study,
scope of the study, contents of the study and research methods.
Chapter 4: FINDING AND DISCUSSION. This chapter reports and discusses the
result from this study.
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS. This chapter presents
some suggestions to partly improve reading skill for the grade 10th students at Tran
Phu High school and the conclusion of the study.

6


7


CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter review the literature related to the study. Firstly, it gives the aims,
characteristic and the teacher and learner roles in CLT. Secondly, we have
communicative activities in language teaching and learning process and characteristics
of communicative activities. And finally, it gives definition of reading, principles for
teaching reading in a CLT classroom and types of communicative activities in reading
classes.
2.1 The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
Towards the end of the 1960s there was a growing dissatisfaction among applied
linguistics and foreign language teachers with the language theories and teaching


rather than revolutionary.
Characteristic of CLT
In CLT, meaning is paramount. Wilkins (1972) classifies meaning into notional
and functional categories and views learning a second language as acquiring the
linguistic means to perform different kinds of functions.
According to Larsen-Freeman (1986: 132) the most obvious characteristic of
CLT is that “Almost everything that is done is done with communicative intent”.
Students use the language through communicative activities (e.g. games, role-plays
and problem-solving tasks).
Another characteristic of CLT is the introduction of authentic material. In CLT, it
is considered desirable to give learners the opportunity to genuine communicative
needs in realistic second language situations so that they develop strategies for
understanding language as actually used by native speakers (Canaled and Swain,
1980).

2.1.3

The teacher and learner roles in CLT
In traditional classroom, teacher talks all the time and students only listen and
write down everything on their notebook. So how do the roles of learners and teacher

change in CLT?
2.1.3.1 The teacher roles
According to Breen and Candlin (1980: 99), cited in Richards and Rodger,
(2001:167), teacher in CLT has some main roles following:
The first role is to facilitate the communicative process between all participants
in the classroom and the various activities and texts.
The second role is to act as an independent participant within the learningteaching group.
The third role for the teacher is that of researcher and learner, with much to

purpose. Their motivation to learn will be improved if the classroom learning
procedure is design with many activities related to their communicative purpose and
can help them to achieve it successfully.
2.1.4.3 Communicative activities create a context which support learning
In language learning, the learning atmosphere in the classroom is also very
important. It somewhat affects the students’ learning. Communicative activities can
create a positive learning atmosphere by providing opportunities for students
interacting with each other and with the teacher as well.th interaction can support
2.2

students in their efforts to learn
Communicative activities
2.2.1 Communicative activities in language teaching and learning process
In the language classrooms, both teachers and students try their best to control
over the language that students use by organizing it into manageable portions to be
developed though communicative activities. Then, what are communicative activities?
The definition of communicative activities was discussed by Klipple (1991) when
he revealed that the term “communicative activities is used to refer to any operation
which is used to consolidate language already taught or acquired and which occurs
during the free stage of a lesson or students can produce meaningful and authentic
utterances without the controlling influence of the teacher or the course”. It means that
10


every time a learner uses a language that they are learning, say English, either
productively or receptively, he or she involves in these kinds of activities.
In a nutshell, communicative activities are those that involve learners in using the
language for communicative rather than display purposes that focus on fluency rather
than accuracy and which involve learners in pair or group work as a setting for that
communication.


communicative desire.
no

communicative 2. They have communicative purposes

purposes.
3. The emphasis is on the form of the 3. The attention should be centered on
language, not its content.
the content not the language form.
4. Only one language item will be the 4. They will have to deal with a variety
focus of attention.
of language.
5. The teacher will often intervene to 5. The teacher should not intervene
correct mistakes, nominate students and
ensure accuracy.
6. The materials will be specially

6. No materials control.

designed focus on a restricted amount of
language.
In summary, it is of great importance to distinguish the characteristics of these
two kinds so that teachers and students of a language can make the best use of
communicative activities in the process of learning and teaching.
2.3
2.3.1

Reading skill
Definition of reading

12


However, Goodman (1967) has another approach to reading. He called reading a
“psycholinguistic” guessing game, the reader make use of the 3 cueing systems: the
semantic, the syntactic and the graphophonic.
In order to develop reading, we need to put reading in social context. Learners are
socialized into reading and the motivation for learning to read not only or even
primarily for enjoyment or information, but because the aspiring reader wants to gain
access to a “community of reader” (Walace: 1988).
Through the concepts of reading, we can conclude that reading is decoding every
letters in text, adding three cueing systems and putting text in social context. We can
understand all information that exists in text and adding our knowledge about life,
society, cultural: consequently, we can predict what the text intend. Thus, it is
2.3.2

necessary tor the students learning how to read in an effective way.
Principles for teaching reading in a CLT classroom
As mentioned above, reading skill plays an important role in English language
learning. Therefore, it is necessary to have a set of principles that teachers of English
must follow when teaching reading so that they can ensure their students’
understanding of the lessons. According to Hoang Thi Xuan, M.A (2009), we have
some points of principles for teaching reading follows:
1. When teaching a reading text, it is beneficial to state a purpose for reading the
given text. Tell the students why they are reading the text.
2. Prepare the students to read by introducing the topic of the passage
3. Before the students read the text, have them read questions about it beforehand
to help them focus on the meaning. It is even helpful to have them try to answer the
questions before they read the text.
4. Do-not-pre-teach vocabulary unless necessary. One of the skills readers should


communicative

activities

into

functional

communication activities and social interaction activities. For the functional
communication activities, the main purpose is that learners should use the language
they know in order to get meaning across as effectively as possible. Success is
measured primarily according to whether they cope with communicative demands of
the immediate situation. Some examples of these activities are questions and answers,
interviews based on a text, information-gap activities, role-play, etc.
In addition, the social interaction activities place emphasis on social as well as
functional aspects of communication. Learners must not only aim to convey meanings
effectively but also pay greater attention to the social contexts in which the
interactions take place. Success is now measured not only in terms of the functional
effectiveness of the language but also in terms of the acceptability of the forms that are
used. In the early stages of learning, acceptability may mean little more than a
reasonable degree of accuracy in pronunciation and grammar. Later, it will
increasingly come to include producing language appropriate to specific kind of social
situations because of the limitation of the classroom; simulation and role-playing are
now important techniques for creating a wider variety of social situations and
relationships.
Basing on medium of communication, communicative activities can also be
classified into two types: oral and written communicative activities according to
Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong (2007).
14

Tran Phu High school during the school year 2014 – 2015.
3.1.2 The teachers
In this study, the researcher investigates 5 teachers who are teaching at English
faculty in Tran Phu High school.
3.2 Scope of the study

The study concerns about communicative activities and reading skill.
Within the study, the author just mentions about some background knowledge
about CLT and reading skills as well as some communicative activities in language
classes.
Furthermore, in this study, the author attempts to carry out the research on the
situation of teaching and learning English reading skill in grade 10 th at Tran Phu High
school. From these, the author’s purpose is to give some suggested communicative
activities as a technique to partly improve reading skill for the grade 10th students.
3.3 Research questions
The main content of this study to find out towards the answer of the following
questions:
• What are the students’ attitudes towards the communicative activities in teaching
•

English reading lessons?
What kinds of Communicative Activities can be applied in English reading classes to

improve reading skill for the grade 10th students?
3.4 Research methods
3.4.1 Research instrument
The instrument to collect the data used in this study is the questionnaire that has
been delivered to 45 students in grade 10th at Tran Phu High school.
The researcher chose this method because it has some advantages. According to
Gillham (2000), the advantage of using questionnaires is that there is less pressure for

Question 7 asks the students for their suggestions for better reading teaching and
learning.
Information from interview is analyzed by chart.
3.4.2 Questionnaire administration.
The questionnaires were delivered in March 2015 during class time at Tran Phu
High school. 45 copies of the questionnaire were delivered for students and 5 copies
of the questionnaire were delivered for the teachers. The students were instructed not
to discuss the questions before they had completed their answers. The researcher will
tell students the target of doing questionnaire and the role with the research. Also, the
respondents were not to write their names on the questionnaires to make sure that all
the respondents would answer freely and confidently. The students were asked to be
17


honest and accurate in completing the questionnaire. The questionnaire was collected
in a short time.

18


CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
This chapter presents the findings of the study and provides discussions based on
the analysis of the findings.
4.1 Findings
4.1.1. Questionnaires for teachers:
Table 1: Their teaching experience
Years of teaching
1-5 years
6-10 years
11-20 years

60%

20%

20%

2. Role play

20%

20%

60%

3. Crossword puzzle

20%

4. Lucky number
5. Group work

Never

80%
100%

80%

20%


0%

According to the table 3, we can see that most of the teachers think that
communicative activities motivate students to read. It means that communicative
activities can make reading lesson better and interesting. But 20% of the teachers said
that they slow down students to read. 100% of the teachers agree that communicative
activities are too demanding and difficult to process. They are also time-consuming.
4.1.2 Questionnaires for students
Table 1: The students’ attitudes toward reading lessons:
Questions

Percent (%)
B
C
22%
12%

1. Are you interested in learning reading lessons?

A
66%

2. Does reading help you much in English?

88%

6%

6%


25%
16,7%

80%

Rarely
5%
66,6%
20%

Never
80%
100%

20%

The data in table 2 show us the communicative activities which are usually done
are finding synonyms and group work activities. Role play activity is used rarely.
Crossword puzzle and lucky number are never done by them.
Table 3: Students’ attitudes when communicative activities are applied in reading
lessons

1. According to you, using communicative

Percent (%)
A
B
C
D
55,6% 22,2% 22,2% 0%

Provide more communicative

90%

opportunities in reading lessons
Apply suitable teaching methods
Others

50%

From the table 4, we can see that 90% of the students suggest teachers should
provide more communicative opportunities in reading lessons. Taking part in
communicative activities regularly and enthusiastically help students motivate in
learning reading English. 75% of the students suggest teachers provide more suitable
communicative activities in reading English lessons. And 50% of the students want
their teachers apply suitable teaching methods. Most of students in this school are low
English level so that teachers apply suitable teaching methods to their language level is
necessary.
4.2 Discussions
4.2.1 The students’ attitudes towards the communicative activities in teaching
English reading lessons
Most of students at Tran Phu High school are interested in reading lessons. We
can affirm that reading plays an important role in learning English. They have positive
attitudes to learn reading lessons and reading skill. They said that using
communicative activities in reading lessons is more effective. It makes the lesson more
interesting.
4.2.2 Some communicative activities can be applied in English reading classes
4.2.2.1 Communicative activities are applied by teachers in teaching English
lesson
Finding synonyms activity is usually used because it is easy to prepare and

games. Group work activity is usually used because most reading tasks of Tieng Anh
10 textbook are designed for this activity. They should also being flexible in
organizing group works in class.
5.1.2 Solutions for students in learning English reading lessons.
Most of students at Tran Phu High school are interested in reading lessons. We
can affirm that reading plays an important role in learning English. They have positive
attitudes to learn reading lessons and reading skill. They said that using
communicative activities in reading lessons is more effective. It makes the lesson more
interesting.
5.1.3 Suggested communicative activities for grade 10th at Tran Phu High school.
I will introduce some communicative activities suggestions to partly improve
reading skill for the grade 10th students at Tran Phu High school.
Group work
The discussion helps students to see how to read thoughtfully. Moreover,
working in groups makes it possible for students to help one another and, in successful
groups, the interaction achieves far more than individuals can working on their own.
Working together can be very motivating and a slight sense of competition between
24


groups does no harm. To be useful for group work, a task must specify exactly what is
to be done, engage every member of the group and promote vigorous discussion. Some
textbook questions or activities are suitable for group work, or you may have to supply
extra tasks for this purpose. Well-planned questions make students realize they do not
understand, and focus attention on the difficult bits of the text. It is important to have a
classroom climate that encourages students to say what they really think.
Role play
Another way of widening the communicative possibilities is by role-play,
scenarios, and other drama techniques. The use of language in a dramatic situation is
likely to include the full complexity of language use: emotional overtones, posture,