VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES
*********************

DƯƠNG THI ̣THU HIỀN

THE EFFECTS OF USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS ON
STUDENTS READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT AT
LE HOAN HIGH SCHOOL
Hiệu quả của việc sử dụng tài liệu thực đối với thành tích học tập
kỹ năng đọc hiểu của học sinh - nghiên cứu ở trường
Trung ho ̣c phổ thông Lê Hoàn

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2017


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES
*********************

DƯƠNG THI ̣THU HIỀN

THE EFFECTS OF USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS ON
STUDENTS READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT AT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to show my deep gratitude to all the
lecturers at University of Language and International Studies – Vietnam
National University, Hanoi for the invaluable lecturers, which laid the
foundation for my thesis.
I would also like to express my sincerest gratitude to Dr. Hoang Thi Xuan
Hoa, my respected supervisor for her precious guidance, critical comments
and constructive supervision throughout my research.
My gratitude also goes to the students and colleagues at Le Hoan High
Schools who enthusiastically participated in the research procedure .Without
their help, this project could not be fulfilled.
Last but not least, I am indebted to my beloved family and friends who
have unfailingly inspired me to complete this study.

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ABSTRACT
The study was conducted with the hope that the result gained could
clarify the effects of using authentic materials on students reading
comprehension achievement at Le Hoan High School. In order to achieve the
goals, quasi-experimental research design was employed. Subjects of the
study were two groups of 30 students each of 10 th grade – students at Le
Hoan High School. One group was assigned as the experimental group and
the other as the control group. The students of both groups were taught with
the same teaching techniques, the same teaching topics and did the same tests
but with different types of teaching materials in an 8-week-period. While the
experimental group used authentic materials provided by the teacher, the
control group only used materials in the course book - English 10 published
by the Ministry of Education and Training. A pretest and a posttest were used


1. Theoretical background ............................................................................... 5
1.1. Overview on reading skill. ................................................................................5
1.1.1. Definition of reading .......................................................................................5
1.1.2. Reading comprehension ..................................................................................6
1.1.3. Reading comprehension achievement ............................................................7
1.1.4. Types of reading comprehension question .....................................................8
1.2. Overview on authentic materials .....................................................................10
1.2.1. Definition of authentic materials ..................................................................10
1.2.2. Types of authentic materials .........................................................................11
1.2.3. Advantages of authentic materials on students reading comprehension
achievement. ...........................................................................................................11

iv


1.2.4. Disadvantages of authentic materials on students reading comprehension
achievement ............................................................................................................14
2. Literature review .................................................................................................16
CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY ........................................................................ 19
1. Methodology .......................................................................................................19
1.1. The applied methodology in the research. .......................................................19
1.2. Quasi-experimental design...............................................................................19
2. Research design...................................................................................................19
2.1. The subjects of the study..................................................................................20
2.2. Selecting teaching materials ...........................................................................20
2.3. Teaching procedure ..........................................................................................23
2.4. Measuring participants’ competence. ..............................................................24
2.4.1. Data collection instrument ............................................................................24
2.4.2. Procedures of data collection ........................................................................25

Chart 4: Experimental group’s results ........................................................... 34

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PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
The study is based on the current situation of teaching and learning
English reading skill of students at Le Hoan High School. Having been
working as an English teacher at Le Hoan High School for 5 years, the
writer realizes an issue that utilizing only reading materials in the course
books is not enough to help students improve their reading skill. They find
it difficult to learn vocabulary as well as the structures in these texts
because of their unfamiliarity in real life. Therefore, they have low
motivation in learning reading and their reading comprehension cannot
ameliorate over a long time. This fact has been shown clearly in the results
of entrance examinations at high school in the recent years since the form
and structure of English test was changed. Most of students at Le Hoan
High School can not do the reading section well whereas this section takes
account for approximately 50 percentages of the total scores. Therefore the
proportion of the students who get high mark in the exams at Le Hoan High
School is very low. And the only way to increase the number of high marks
is improving students’ reading comprehension competence. Although the
English teachers at Le Hoan School have tried their best to encourage their
students to learn reading skill and improve their achievement by using
different positive teaching techniques, it seems not to bring about much
effectiveness.
Moreover, reading skill is one of the most important skills to each of
students during their foreign language learning procedure. To feature the
importance of reading comprehension, Rivers (1981:147 ) asserted that “

base for the author to decide if authentic materials could be suitable teaching
materials to students at Le Hoan High School

2


2. The research question and objectives of the study
When doing the study, there are a lot of issues which need finding out
and making clear. However, the most important one focused on the current
study is investigating the effects of using authentic materials on students
reading comprehension achievement at Le Hoan High School.
To accomplish the objectives, the research mainly concentrated on
answering the following research question: “What are the effects of using
authentic materials on students’ reading comprehension achievement?”
3. The scope of the study
The study is a small-sized scale thesis, thus it can not cover all the issues
related to the problem discussed. The paper mainly focuses on the effects of
using authentic materials on students reading comprehension achievement at
Le Hoan High School, Thanh Liem district, Ha Nam province. The subjects
in the study are 60 students of 10th grade at Le Hoan High School. They are
randomly chosen and divided into two groups, one experimental group and
one control group.
An important point of the study needs emphasizing that authentic materials
provided to experimental group is only used as a supplementary materials
besides the reading materials taken out from the course book and the reading
activities in class.
4. Significance of the study
The result of the study will be a foundation to help the English teachers
especially the English teachers at Le Hoan High School who are looking for
a new method in teaching reading skill to their students. It supplies not only



PART B: DEVELOMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1. Theoretical background
The study focuses on studying the effects of using authentic materials on
students reading comprehension achievement. Therefore, in the writing
there are some terms used frequently as the key words such as authentic
materials, reading comprehension and reading comprehension achievement.
1.1. Overview on reading skill.
1.1.1. Definition of reading
There are a lot of different definitions of reading activity. Although every
linguistic gives out the definitions by their own words, most of them share
the same idea that reading is a crucial skill in learning procedure and it is
considered as an integral skill to help students to gain information and
expand their background knowledge. When reading, the readers can not just
focus on the meaning of individual word; the most importance of reading is
that they must use the knowledge of linguistics to find out the meaning
hidden behind the printed text. To support the idea Weir (1993) states that
reading is seen as a selective process taking place between the reader and
text, in which background knowledge and various types of language
knowledge interact with information in the text to contribute text
comprehension. Another definition stated by Cooper et al (1988) is that
reading, as one of the language skills to be taught, is a process of
constructing or developing meaning of printed text. In addition, Grabe and
Stoller (2002) suppose that reading is the ability of drawing meaning and
interpreting information in the printed page appropriate. According to
Williams (1989), reading is a process of looking at and understanding what
has been written. Similarly, Goodman (2009) contends that reading is an
essential interaction between language and thought in which the writer

understanding the meaning of a text. By gathering the information stated in
6


the text with their background knowledge and some sub-reading skills, the
students can draw out the implied message. As stated by Suparman (2012)
the sub-reading skills that a reader should master to deeply understand the
text; for instance, identifying main idea, identifying details, understanding
vocabulary, making inference and making reference are really important to
students’ improvement.
1.1.3. Reading comprehension achievement
After finishing a reading course, reading comprehension achievement of
students is what a teacher expects most. To know whether or not the
students make progress, an achievement test may be conducted. As Grellet
(1996) says reading comprehension achievement can be defined as the
successful result of students’ comprehension in guessing, predicting, and
understanding the written text by doing such an achievement test. The test
is a tool to assess learning procedure of learners. Therefore, reading
comprehension achievement is expected to be good to fulfill individual
improvement in academic performance.
In addition, another linguist Mc Whorter (1989) supposes that reading
comprehension

achievement

covers

some

aspects


Make value judgments about, and based on the reading experience

(read critically)
It means that a good achievement test must inspect students’
comprehension about all aspects above.
1.1.4. Types of reading comprehension question
There are a number of reading comprehension question types that the test
takers often have to deal with in the reading section. To overcome these
types of questions well, the examinees need to recognize the question types
quickly, and understand the aim of the questions as well as the common
traits of correct and incorrect answers. According to Peterson’s (2000) and
the forms of the questions often appearing in the test, the test takers often
meet the main types of questions as follows.
 Main idea.
The main idea question requests the test taker to make out what the
passage or the paragraph is discussing about. It is often found in the topic
sentence which is at the beginning or at the ending of the passage. It includes
a topic and a something about the topic. Thus, the test taker must be able to
identify the thesis of the passage and those ideas that support this thesis.
 Supporting idea
Supporting idea question, in fact, is the question about the specific
information stated in the passage. It often begins with “according to the
passage” or “the passage states that”. The answer to the question is
contained in two or three sentences. If the test taker has a better ability to
find a specific piece of information, he will be able to find the answer more
easily.
 Inference

8



Vocabulary-in-context question is the one that asks the candidate to
make out the suitable meaning of a specific word in the passage based on the
context. A single word may have more than a meaning, but only the most
suitable one can be used in the paragraph.
1.2. Overview on authentic materials
1.2.1. Definition of authentic materials
Any teacher who would like to improve their students’ comprehension
achievement, he needs to motivate them during the learning procedure by
using suitable teaching materials. Only when being taught by the materials
they are interested in, can the students gain a good achievement. On finding
materials that meets the teachers and students’ needs, most of the researchers
started concerning the term “authentic materials” and agreed that authentic
materials should be brought into classes. Defined by Nunan (1989); “any
material which has not been specifically produced for the purpose of
language teaching.” (Cited in Macdonald, Badger &White, 2000). Similarly,
Wong (1995) defines authentic materials as the materials which are used in
genuine communication in the real world and it is not specifically prepared
for the teaching and learning of English. Except for these two scholars, there
are some other ones sharing this point of view such as Nunan (1988), Jordan
(1997) and Herod (2002). Besides, to make the definition of authentic
materials more clearly by supporting some examples, Grellet (1996) gives
out his own definition that authenticity is no change of the original text and
its presentation and lay out are retained. A newspaper article, for instance,
should be presented as it first appeared in the paper with the same typeface,
space devoted to the headlines, and pictures.
Thus, authentic materials can be understood simply that it is a kind of
materials which is used in our daily life to solve real social situations. They
are not redesigned for language teaching purposes.

factor helping them involve in mastering a foreign language. To change the
11


situation, they also express that replacing the traditional materials by
authentic materials which were written for native speakers of certain
communication and will be used by the speakers of the language in
communication circumstances outside of the classroom. Some famous
researchers support for this ideas such as Guariento and Morley, 2001;
Paltridge, 2001; Shrum and Glisan, 2000. Most of them agree that this kind
of materials increase the learners’ motivation toward reading. Especially,
Otte, 2006 and Thanajaro, 2000 clearly showed that after utilizing authentic
materials in language classroom, the improvement of learners’ selfsatisfaction and motivation go up remarkably. In addition to, Guariento
&Morely, 2001 say that authentic materials help motivate learners learn the
language by making them feel that they are learning the 'real' language. And
Hyland (2003) states that one of the most important advantages of using
authentic materials is that it increases learners’ motivation and reflect
positively on the learning process. Explaining the reason why authentic
materials is often more highly appreciated than text books Speller (2002)
and Rizgiyah (2009) say that authentic materials can be up to date and
related to the everyday issues and activities. The use of authentic materials
in the classroom can motivate the students because there are three layers of
learning that are: language learning (the structure and vocabulary), cultural
insight, and practical application. In fact, the teachers can explore an
abundant source of authentic materials from real life such as magazines,
newspapers, street signs, etc. According to Genhard (1996), there are three
types of authentic materials that the educators can choose to make it suitable
with the purpose of each lesson. The first type is authentic listening
materials such as radio news, cartoons, songs,…The second one is authentic
visual materials such as street signs, magazines and newspapers pictures,


students

implementing
problems

in

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certain classroom. It

the research,

the

researcher

means
needs

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to identify

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really found in the classroom.