THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HA TRUNG DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE

SOME TRICKS TEACH READING COMPREHENSION SKILL
FOR STUDENTS AT HABINH SECONDARY SCHOOL

Performed by:
Nguyen Van Ban
Job title:
Teacher
Unit of work:
Ha Binh Secondary School
Experience initiative in the subject: English

THANH HOA 2017

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INDEX
Table of content
1. INTRODUCTION.
1.1. The reason for choosing the topic.
1.2. Research purpose.
1.3. Research subjects.
1.4. Research methodology.
2. CONTENTS.
2.1. Theoretical foundation of the experience initiative.

revolution. It is an important language, commonly used worldwide and is used
in different fields. In the national construction, development and integration
with the world, English has become a communicative tool between all of the
modern people, it is an important second language after their mother tongue. In
our country, English is considered as the language of transaction in economics,
politics, culture, and has been teaching at the elementary, secondary, college,
university... In process of learning English, we know more in another language,
a different culture and also more love Vietnamese and Vietnamese culture. To
use English as a language of communication, we not only need to master the
rules of grammar, have good listening skills, have knowledge of the language
but also to have a number of diversified, rich lexical. English is increasingly
attracting the attention of many people and all ages. The catch is that demand,
the 2005 education law stipulated "Educational methods have to promote a
positive, self-discipline, initiative, thinking and creativity of students, fostering
the self-study ability, practical ability, passion for learning” [1].
In the process of practical teaching in Ha Binh secondary school, I find
the students difficult to approach an English reading comprehension. Because
the final purpose of teaching English reading comprehension is after each class
and course, students can be self-confident to read the readings related to their
familiar topics and limit the dictionary if possible. The purpose of teaching this
reading comprehension is entirely suitable for the direction: “Learner is the
center of teaching of foreign languages and communication method” [2].
That method is not new for most foreign language teachers, although in
practice, the application of this method is not always easy and achieves the
desired result. English, which is used in various fields, is a language of great
importance and popularity all over the world. With the orientation of global
integration, Vietnam has developed its potentials of all areas.
Therefore, communication has become an effective tool with a
prerequisite strength. In addition to the mother tongue, English has been
considered by Vietnamese as the second communication language and an official

1.2. Research purpose.
In fact, the teaching of reading is to help students develop the skills and
understand documents, books and newspapers in English with the content in
accordance with specific qualifications and to help them gather information,
raise the level of English and know more about the society. When learners read
the native language, they have no difficulty in understanding the content but
when learning English, they will encounter the grammatical structures and
vocabulary. Therefore, to help students learn how to read a textbook the best and
the most effective, which is my first concern. From this fact, I have strongly
given teaching experience myself through “Some tricks teach reading
comprehension skill for students at Ha Binh Secondary School”. I hope that
a number of these measures will contribute the solution and remove the
difficulties in the process of deep mining activities during teaching reading.
1.3. Research subjects.
Audience research: Students in grade 7,8,9 at Ha Binh Secondary School.
Scope of the study: Ha Binh Secondary School in the academic year 2016-2017.
1.4. Research methodology.
- Method created situations, suggestive, student- focused.
2. CONTENTS.
2.1. Theoretical foundation of the experience initiative.
Structure of a lesson in English teaching typically includes activities to
develop four skills: listening- speaking-reading-writing in a comprehensive way
and in the right direction. If we look at the layout of each unit of study, we can
clearly see the importance of reading comprehension part of the process of
teaching and learning English. So teaching and learning English has not
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achieved the desired results because reading comprehension is taught in the
traditional method: most of the time in the class, the teacher mainly teaches

understand the lesson and remember information more or less, the vocabulary
they have been holding well or not. Because of paying attention to the steps of
practical reading and providing new words, the teachers have given less
practical exercises to consolidate after reading. Teachers don’t spend much time
researching tricks and suggested procedures in order to encourage students to be
voluntary self-conscious, initiative and active to participate in training and
developing English reading comprehension skills. Ha Binh secondary school is a
school in the countryside, so the implementation quality of English teaching and
learning is not high due to low resident’s qualification and awareness, poor
economy, insufficient and asynchronous facilities. Psychobiology of students:
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afraid of learning, speak, making mistakes, embarrass with friends and teachers,
some are lazy to study and do homework.
In spite of objective and subjective conditions directly affecting teaching,
we have overcome immediate difficulties and step by step improved quality of
English reading lesson so as to meet the aims of textbook curriculum.
For the teacher: Initially access and utilize typical reading comprehension
teaching techniques relatively well (reading technique), get familiar with and be
active in organizing a reading lesson session, coordinate flexibly teaching skills
in reading lessons, create many teaching materials in accordance with content of
learning lessons; therefore, the sessions become vivid and attractive with high
effectiveness, utilize and operate modern teaching equipment in reading lesson,
such as cassette tape, DVD, cassette recorder, video reader and multi-purpose
projector. It is still difficult for some teachers to implement teaching
manipulation and technique in reading lesson as well as to select suitable
techniques for specific teaching lesson and session. They still hesitate to or
unskillfully utilize teaching materials for reading lessons, such as cassette reader
and demonstrating pictures. For other teachers, the investment in lesson


Quantity

Quantity

Quantity

Quantity

have oriented a specific plan and method to actively investigate the current
situation of English learning of my students. Findings of the investigation
indicated that most of the students do not soundly understand vocabulary and
their English reading and communication skills are still limited. To achieve the
above-mentioned objectives, students should be trained all the four skills
including listening, speaking, reading and writing during their English learning.
However, English curriculum at secondary school level concentrates on the two
basic skills only, which are speaking and writing. The other two skills have not
gained much attention; therefore, student’s learning performance is not high.
This issue is indicated by learning performance of students in previous
years and findings of the survey on student quality conducted in some classes in
terms of English subject early last school-year (2015-2016).
Good
Fair
Weak
Poor
Total Excellent
Class/
number
Grade
of

effectively.
Firstly: The teacher has to make lesson plan for a reading session.
To provide a good teaching session, teacher needs to implement the
following steps. Studying content of the lesson in student textbook and teacher’s
book carefully is very important because it is a necessary base for teacher to set
up teaching plan for the lesson. When teacher study textbook and teacher’s book
carefully, he/she is able to organize and control the session on set with key
points as well as to logically manage learning time and activities.
Purpose and requirements of the session is the target that both teacher and
student have to reach after the lesson. For usual teaching session, purpose and
requirements are the practice and development of skills including listening,
speaking, reading and writing of students (in which reading is the most
important skill). Finishing reading part and understanding main content of the
reading text, students complete some language requirements or exercises.
The selection of reading techniques is determined basing content of the
lesson, students characteristics, strong points and weak points, acquired
knowledge and skills. Questions in exercise are ordered from easy to difficult
level. Exercises for weak, fairly good, good and excellent students shall be
separated. Time should be organized logically for the session and specific phases
during the reading lesson, which include pre – reading phase, while – reading
phase and post – reading phase [5].
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Teaching techniques are selected to be suitable with each phase such as
utilization of teaching measures and tools for a reading lesson, utilization of
cassette reader.
Before the lesson, good cassette reader, clear cassette tape, spare battery
in case of power off should be prepared. Safety should be ensured during
manipulation. Students are absolutely not allowed to use the equipment without

Matching: For this type of exercise, students read a passage to get
information and complete the exercise by matching contents of column A to
suitable contents of column B.
True – False statements: For this type of exercise, students read a passage
to get information and find sentences indicating whether the statements are true
or false. Teacher may use supplement board to provide students with additional
information and ask them to guess right/wrong before reading. Finish checking
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student’s guessing, teacher request students to quote their answer from the text
and may ask them to correct the wrong sentence.
Reorder sentences: For this type of exercise, students shall read a passage
to understand its content and reorder statements in wrong order in the exercise
below so as to create a logical passage.
Make summaries: After reading to get information, students summarize
content of the reading text.
Select a summary/a title.
Find new words for old words: Students read and find synonymic or
antonymic words or phrases in the text for given words or phrases.
KWL (Knew – Want to know – Learn): For this form of exercise, students
have the chance to develop their KWL learning method. They can work
individually or in a group.
Secondly: The teacher has to make a good reading comprehension
teaching session.
Progress of a reading session also consists of 3 phases including Pre –
Reading, while – Reading and Post – Reading. This type of progress does not
help student understand the lesson but apply reading skills in practical situations
also. However, the first issue that teacher should verify is to clearly define
purpose and requirement of specific reading lesson so as to provide orientation

the needs, reasons and aims of reading and let student predict the text or give
expectation. Some pre-reading activities are mentioned below.
Activity 1: Ordering statements that are not in order. Students are
requested to read and reorder these statements with their understanding and after
that open the book and check their prediction. Number of statements may be
from 1 to 6.
For example: English 9: Unit 3: A trip to the countryside
Lesson 4: Read
Rearrange these sentences into the correct order [7].
1. Peter plays baseball.
2. He will stay there till the beginning of October.
3- They have two children.
4- He feeds the chickens and collects their eggs.
5- The Parkers are nice so Van feels like a member of their family.
6- Mrs. Parker works part-time at a grocery store in a nearby town.
Key: 2 -> 6 -> 3 -> 4 -> 1 -> 5.
* Activity 2: Jigsaw dictation.
Students are divided into small groups (6-7 students/group). Teacher shall
copy contents of the text (about 6-7 statements) and hand out one to each
student. The students shall dictate each other in turn, then predict order of these
statements and finally open the book to check.
For example: English 7: Unit 7:
B. The worker (B2 – Read) [8]
1- He usually starts work at six in the morning.
2- Mr. Tuan works in the fields with his brother.
3- Mr. Tuan rests and eats lunch.
4- His work usually finishes at six.
5- He goes to the city with his wife.
* Activity 3: Ordering Pictures
Teacher prepares some pictures relating to the lesson content that students

information. Students are requested to predict the rest contents and then read the
book to check their prediction.
For example: English 9: Unit 8: Celebrations - Lesson 4: Read [7].
Celebration
When?
Activities
Food
Country
Tet
Viet Nam
…...................... …................
…................. Special meal …................
called Seder

Easter
With activities before reading, students have the chance to partly visualize
contents of the reading text; although what they have percept is not clear yet.
Information in prediction activities is usually main ideas of the reading text.
Teacher should not provide detailed information in this phase to mainly train
students the skill of skimming for main ideas. Reading in this phase is
considered the first step of reading.
* While – reading.
At the beginning of this phase, students shall read to check the
information that they have predicted in the previous phase. Teacher shall let
students compare their prediction with the information they get after their first
reading. Teacher will then correct the answer for the whole class. If students are
not content with the answer, teacher shall request them to reread the text
consisting of the correct information. After that, teacher instruction some
activities so that students shall reread the text more carefully. This is the key
phase of reading practice; therefore teacher shall carefully prepare contents and

the ideas about a problem.
This activity asks students to listen and answer the questions to get the right
information which can be found in the reading and the information is not right in
that reading and all students know how to infer from the content they have just
read. This activity encourages to be used and can be used for any public readings
in the syllabus.
For example: English 9: Unit 3: A trip to the countryside
Lesson 4: Read [7].
Answer the following questions:
1. How long will Van stay in the USA?
2. How many children do Mr and Mrs. Parker have?
3. What does Van do as soon as he finishes his homework in the afternoon?

4. What do the Parker family and Van do while they watch Peter play?
Between and beyond the line questions: why, how, what, do you think..
* Activity 3: Multiple choice
This activity asks students to read and choose the correct answer: A, B, C
or D for each question. This is one of the procedures to identify specific
information skills in the reading they have just read. But teaching reading
comprehension is suitable for the requirements of the innovation of teaching
methods, which helps students read a comprehensive reading, so teachers have
to use this procedure reasonably. With this procedure, students can check and
understand the content of the reading or the meaning of a new word or new
structure.
Example: English 8: Unit 1 – My friends. (Read – page 13) [9].
*Choose the best answer and write.
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1. Ba talks about ….. of his friends.

a (5)…….of the electricity of (6)………bulbs and last eight times longer…
* Activity 5: Grids or forms
To check students’ perception of main ideas and information classification,
teacher provides a form with certain information and requests students to read
the text and fill information into the blanks.
Example: English 9
Unit 13 – Festivals.
Read – Page 126 - Complete the table [7].
Christmas special
Place of origin
Date
Riga
mid-19th century
Christmas carols
USA
* Activity 6: Matching
This form of exercise is used to check meaning of introduced vocabulary
(pre-teach), to predict meaning of word in context, or to test students’ perception
of main ideas of the reading text. Teacher creates two columns of words and
phrases to be predicted (maybe in English or English/Vietnamese). Reading the
text, students may predict meaning of word via this table. Teacher should let
students reread this table after they finish their assignment.
Example: New English 8 – Unit 11- Science and technology
Skills1 (Reading) – Page 54 [10].
Underline the following words and phrases in the passages in 1. Match each
of them with its explanation.
13


A

encourage their confidence in accessing standard reading text. With extensive
reading, students may still understand the overall information provided by
practical language in daily life even if their ability is limited. Teacher should
encourage students’ silent reading to understand the lesson content. Reading
aloud helps students practice pronunciation only. Although students can listen to
the reading text once or twice so as to easier practice speaking to give answers
about content of the passage. For long exercise, teacher may apply the tactic of
dividing the text into passages and assign each group of student to read one
passage and then comment for other group. By this way, teacher is able to utilize
and save time in class to organize other supplement activities for the text reading
comprehension, helping students understand more deeply what they have learnt
from the passage.
*Post – Reading (Role play, Recall the story, Write-it-up, Further Practice, etc).
This phase is for practice after reading and completion of exercise under
requirements and questions on reading comprehension, teacher may continue
activities requiring overall understanding of the whole text, practical reference
or knowledge conveying, grammar structure reinforcement practice. Activities
for this phase are described below.
* Activity 1: Gap fill.
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This activity is similar to that of while-reading phase; however, same
activities should not be repeated. Teachers write the summary of reading on the
board (briefly) with the missing words and ask students to fill the missing words
in the blanks. This exercise helps students understand the reading the most
succinctly and the most effectively.
Example: English 8 - Unit 8 – Country life and city life.
Read – Page 75 [9].
Work with a partner. Complete the summary. Use information from the passage.

Read – Page 43, 44 [7].
Read the forum on the Internet in the reading text again (5. Read- page 43,44).
Write a passage about the benefits of the Internet. You can use the following
cues.
- The Internet as source of information (news, articles, weather forecast, ect…).
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- The Internet as source of entertainment (music, movies, games, ect…).
-The Internet as a means of education
( on-line schools, on-line lessons, self-study, ect...)
* Activity 4: Discussion. This procedure can be used to:
- Identify reading contents and its meaning.
- Draw the learned lesson after having studied it.
- Combine speaking skills.
Example: English 9 - Unit 5: The Media
Read - Page 43, 44 [7].
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet (discussion about
the benefits (advantages) of the Internet. (group 1); discussion about the
disadvantages of the Internet. (group 2)).
2.4. The effectiveness of experience initiatives for educational activities.
During my teaching, I have applied the techniques and organized forms to
teach reading in English in order to promote a positive and creativity of students
in foreign language classes as well as the experimental lesson of colleagues.
There are the following results: Teachers do not explain lengthy lectures, they do
not replace the job of students. Teachers play only the role as the organizer,
instructor to help students study. In other words, teachers play the role of
designer. For the students, they acquire actively knowledge and are subjects the
activities. They study enthusiastically and excitedly, they explore, discover and
exploit knowledge actively and students understand the content of the lesson in

Poor

%

Number

10

%

Weak
Number

04

%

Average
Number

%

Good
Number

9 (46hs)

Number
8(39hs)



Poor
16


9

19.5

13

33.3

14

30.4

17

43.6

21

45.6

%

Number

18


4.3

0

%

Thus, from an earlier year, the rate % of students to acquire and
understand the lesson is markedly increased, the rate of pretty and good students
increases and the average percentage of poor students are reduced. Particularly,
students are more dynamic and self-reliant, teacher-student relationship becomes
closer. In class, the distance between teachers and students is narrower. Students
ask him strongly, present their views and their positions and expand their
communication and their thinking.
It is seen that the application of these reading comprehension teaching
method into practical teaching has brought much higher results in comparison
with the period when teaching method was not improved. This achievement
encourages me to continuously try my best to bring higher results as well as
apply these methods more to specific teaching sessions.
3. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS.
3.1. Conclusion.
During the research conduction, I myself found that the practice of
reading comprehension at Secondary School is very necessary. Abovementioned practice methods shall help students and teachers with easier practice
of reading skills among Secondary School students.
Teachers themselves should continuously study and enrich their specialty
via means of information. They should promptly recognize the innovation in
teaching method and education, which is vital to each teacher. Being able to
apply this methods, quality of foreign language teaching shall be enhanced,
students shall be more interested in studying and more confident in
communicating with foreigners if they have chance to do so.

forward to the colleagues' sincere comments so that my subject is more
complete.
I sincerely thank you.
CONFIRMATION OF HEADMASTER

Thanh Hoa, March 17th 2017
I assure that my experience initiative
is not copied from the others' content.
Written by

Nguyen Van Ban

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REFERENCES
****
[1]. The Education Law of the National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam No. 38/2005 / QH11 dated June 14, 2005.
[2]. Kevin Barry, Len King - Beginning teaching. Australia, 1993.
[3]. Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension. Reading Rockets.
(Adler, C.R.(2014)).
[4]. Developing Reading Skills: Identifying Main Ideas. Thai Watana Panich
Co.Ltd (Maggs, Margaret Martin (1982)).
[5]. Technical teaching English to young adult learners at Secondary Schools
(Mr Nguyen Quoc Hung, MA).
[6]. Reading Comprehension Strategies in Teaching Reading.(Moore, David W.
(2014)).
[7]. English textbook 9 - Nguyen Van Loi (Chief editor) - Educational
Publisher, 2002.


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Some experiences
teaching pronunciation
for students at Ha Son
Secondary School.
Some experiences to
teach listening skill for
students at Ha Son
Secondary School.
Some techniques to
teach new words for
students at Ha Binh
Secondary School .
Effective teaching
method of English
reading comprehension
skills for students of
grade 8, 9”

Ha Trung
department of
education and
training.
Ha Trung
department of
education and
training
Ha Trung


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