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

VŨ QUỲNH HOA

DEVELOPING PRE-READING TASKS FOR FIRST-YEAR
STUDENTS OF ENGLISH-MAJOR DIVISION, DEPARTMENT
OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, VINH PHUC COLLEGE: AN ACTION
RESEARCH PROCESS
(NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG VỀ VIỆC PHÁT TRIỂN HOẠT ĐỘNG GIAI
ĐOẠN TRƯỚC KHI ĐỌC CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT CỦA TỔ
NGOẠI NGỮ, KHOA XÃ HỘI, TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG VĨNH PHÚC)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2016


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

VŨ QUỲNH HOA

DEVELOPING PRE-READING TASKS FOR FIRST-YEAR


I am indeed thankful to my supervisor, Dr. Vũ Thị Thanh Nhã, whose
sympathetic guidance has been the source of inspiration and knowledge for my
research. I am also grateful to other teachers of the Department of Post-Graduate
Studies for their encouragement and valuable advice.
I have profound regards for all the teachers of English-major Division of
Vinh Phuc College and for all of the English-major freshmen of the class 18 who
spent their precious time on completing my survey questionnaire. Without their
enthusiastic cooperation, my thesis would not have been completed.
My great thanks are also given to my family and my friends who have
constantly supported, inspirited and encouraged me during the process of my study.

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ABSTRACT

This action research focused on finding out the primary problem related to
using pre-reading tasks; hence, the major purpose of the study aimed to develop
pre-reading tasks for improving students’ reading performance. The research was
conducted with first-year students of English-major Division, Department of Social
Science, Vinh Phuc College. Data were collected through 4 observed lessons and
two sets of survey questionnaire delivered to 32 freshmen of the class 18 English
after the lessons. The research findings revealed the problem of ineffective use of
pre-reading tasks in reading lessons as well as its causes and effects on students’
reading performance. Finally, I also presented suggestions for developing prereading tasks that the teachers have used in their reading lessons for improving
students’ reading performance.

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v


TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION ....................................................................................... i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT............................................................................................. iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................. iv
LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES ....................................................... v
TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................................................................... vi
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .............................................................. I
1.1. Rationale ..................................................................................................................I
1.2. Aims of the Study ................................................................................................. II
1.3. Research questions ............................................................................................... II
1.4. Significance of the Study .................................................................................... II
1.5. Scope of the Study ................................................................................................ II
1. 6. Method of the research ..................................................................................... III
1. 7. Design of the study ............................................................................................. III

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND...................................V
2.1. Introduction........................................................................................................... V
2.2. Theoretical background of reading.................................................................. V

2.2.1. Definitions of reading .............................................................. V
2.2.2. Types of reading..................................................................... VI
2.3. Teaching and learning reading skills ..............................................................IX

2.3.1. The importance of reading in foreign language learning ....... IX
2.3.2. Stages of a reading lesson........................................................ X

3.4.2. Classroom observations ............ Error! Bookmark not defined.
3.5. Methods of Data Anal ysis............................ Error! Bookmark not defined.
3.6. Research Method – Action research (AR) . Error! Bookmark not defined.

3.6.1. Definitions of AR....................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
3.6.2. Action research model............... Error! Bookmark not defined.
3. 7. Summary .......................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS...............................Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.1. Introduction...................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
4. 2. Findings ............................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined.

4.2.1. Cycle 1 ....................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.2.2. Cycle 2 ....................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.2.3. Cycle 3 ....................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
4. 3. Summary .......................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION........................Error! Bookmark not defined.
5. 1. Introduction.................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
5.2. Discussion.......................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

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5.3. Implications ...................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

5.3.1. Employing pre-reading tasks suitable for students’ interests
............................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined.
5. 3.2. Varying pre-reading tasks........ Error! Bookmark not defined.
5. 3. 3. Pedagogical use of pre-reading tasksError! Bookmark not

in English as a second language, reading plays the most crucial role of the four
skills. Teaching reading, consequently, has attracted greater attention. However, in
reading classes, it is common that students do not absolutely know about topic of the
text they are reading about. Thus, pre-reading stage in each reading lesson becomes
indispensable for introducing and for arousing interest in the topic; for motivating
learners by giving a reason for reading and for providing some language preparation
for the text (Williams, 1986, p.37).
At Vinh Phuc College, where I work, teaching reading is extremely essential
in developing all of the four basic English skills for students. As a teacher of
English here, I am teaching reading skill to first-year students of English-major
division, Department of Social-Science. I realize pre-reading stage in each lesson
has significant effects on the students’ reading performance. However, using prereaching tasks in each pre-reading stage is far from satisfactory. In other words, prereading tasks I used in each reading lesson had not led to effective performance.
These tasks were so not only simple but also ineffective that they could not
motivate students for reading, provide prior knowledge or build necessary
background for comprehending the text. Therefore, I decided to carry out the action
research to develop pre-reading tasks for first-year students of English-major
Division, Department of Social-Science, Vinh Phuc College. Based on the findings
of this action research, some changes and improvements can be applied in my
lessons, and some appropriate strategies need to be designed with the hope that
students will work more effectively in a reading lesson. I hope that the findings of
this study will be shared with other teachers who have experienced similar
problems.

I


1.2. Aims of the Study
The main purpose of the study is to develop pre-reading tasks in reading
lessons for English-major freshmen at Vinh Phuc college. Specifically, it aims at:


performance in reading lessons, I only focus my study on one of these factors – i.e.

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developing pre-reading tasks effectively to improve students’ reading performance
in reading lessons. The study was conducted at course 18 English in 4 lessons. Each
lesson lasted 4 periods (45minutes/ period).
1. 6. Method of the research
The research method I used is the action research. The study was carried out
with the process adapted by Tsui (1993) including five concrete steps: identifying
problems, finding causes of the problem, designing strategies for improvement
(plan for action) and writing a proposal for action research, trying out the strategies
(action) and evaluating the try-out. These steps were grouped into four phases in the
following figure
(1) DIAGNOSING
Identifying the
problem & its causes

(2) ACTION PLANNING
designing strategies for improvement
writing a proposal for action research

(4) EVALUATING
evaluating the try-out

(3) TAKING ACTION
trying out the strategies

Figure 1: Action research procedure

second section focuses on teaching and learning reading skills consisting of
importance of reading in foreign language learning and stages of reading lesson.
The third one emphasizes on the theoretical background of pre-reading tasks which
comprises an overview of pre-reading tasks and a classification of these tasks.
2.2. Theoretical background of reading
2.2.1. Definitions of reading
There are various definitions of reading. Herein, I also would like to mention
different points of view on the definition of reading.
In the simple way, Ur (1996, p.138) defines that “reading means reading and
understanding”. In other words, specifically, reading is regarded as a process in
which the readers look at the reading text and receive the significance of the
message from the text (Williams, 1984 and Aebersold and Field, 1997).
Another interesting definition of reading by Harmer (1989) is that reading is
considered as an exercise with the eyes and the brain. The brain works to understand the
message from the reading text after this message is received by the eyes.
A definition of reading is offered by Rubin and Thomson (1994, p.91),
“reading is an active information-seeking process in which readers relate
information in the text what they already know”. From this point of view, both the
reader’s knowledge of the language and their background knowledge play the
significant role for their reading success.
Reading is also defined as the interaction between the reader and the author.
According to Smith (1978, p.102), “reading is understands the author’s thought”.
He also explained that “it means that we-the readers-read the author’s mind not the
author’s words”. In addition, reading is described in a more extensive way: “reading
is understanding written language”, “reading is a complex mental process”,
“reading is thinking” (Roe, Stood and Burns, 1987, p.2).
In short, from these theories above, it is obvious that no definition can likely
consist of all aspects or features of the definition of reading. Each linguist’s

V

on the text’s meaning when they highly concentrate on pronouncing the words. In
other words, when reading aloud, students only focus on the pronunciation instead
of the meaning of the text. The second disadvantage is that when students take turn
to read a text aloud, only one student is active; the others do not have to read. It can
be inferred that there is little value in reading aloud for improving the readers’
reading skills. Therefore, the teachers as well as educators should identify the level
of their students and decide whether to apply reading aloud or not in teaching
reading to their students.
2.2.2.2. Silent reading

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According to Doff (1988, p.67), “silent reading involves looking at sentence
and understanding the message it conveys, in other words making sense of a written
text. It does not normally involve saying the words we read nor even silently in our
heads”. When reading silently, students not only understand the message of the text
but also get the main ideas of the text for answering the questions.
In conclusion, silent reading is an effective skill for reading process in
general and reading comprehension in particular, since the teacher can check his or
her students’ understanding easily and can adjust the reading materials and
exercises to suit the students’ ability. Moreover, students also mainly focus on the
meaning of the text instead of pronunciation. Therefore, it should be applied in
teaching and learning a foreign language.
Within the category of silent reading, the two types of reading named are
intensive and extensive reading. Intensive reading is used to teach or practice
specific reading strategies or skills. The text is treated as an end in itself. Extensive
reading on the other hand, involves reading of large quantities of material, directly
and fluently. It is treated as a means to an end. It may include reading simply for
pleasure or reading technical, scientific or professional material. It can be concluded

understanding, with the focus generally on the meaning of what is being read than
on the language”. Thus, extensive reading is regarded as a useful activity for
students’ self-learning. In Brown’s view point (2001), extensive reading helps
students enrich their language elements because it is one of the key to achieve
reading ability, linguistic competence, vocabulary, spelling and writing.
To summarize, extensive reading is one of the best ways to improve
students’ reading performance. The reason for this is that extensive reading is
carried out “to achieve a general understanding of a text” (Brown, 1989, p.31).
Basing on the purposes of reading, extensive reading may involve two specific
types of reading, scanning for key details and skimming for the essential meaning.
Firstly, scanning is one of the effective skills commonly used in reading
comprehension. There have been numerous definitions of scanning. According to
Brown (2001, p.308), scanning is defined as “quickly searching for some particular
piece or pieces of information in a text”. Also, Williams (1987, p.7) stated that
“scanning occurs when a reader goes through a text very quickly in order to find a
particular point of information”. From these view points, it is inferred that scanning
is very high speed reading for finding a particular piece of information. Therefore,
scanning is regarded as a useful skill to help the readers to skip over unimportant
words and to focus on searching the details they want. In addition to definitions of
scanning, Grellet (1981, p.19) also provides a more detailed one that “when
scanning, we only try to locate information and often we do not even follow the
linearity of passage to do so, and scanning is far more limited since it only means
retrieving what information is relevant to our purpose”. In brief, these above authors
all have the same point that scanning is a useful technique for quick and efficient
reading. Thus, it can be practiced with the great range of texts such as dictionaries,
maps and labels.
Secondly, based on the theory of skimming made by Brown (2001, p.304),
“skimming consists of quickly running eyes across the whole text for its gist.

VIII

Secondly, reading is also concerned for improving listening skill. Rivers and
Temperly (1978, p.259) point out that “listen to worthwhile reading or dramatic
presentation of what they have read. The aural element adds vividness and life to
the reading unit”. They also further state that “practice in direct reading of a text
which is readily accessible to the students at their present level of knowledge, while
they are simultaneously listening to a taped model reading it in meaningful and
expressive segments, can help students develop useful habits of anticipation and
syntactic identification in both of these skills”. Finally, that is integration of reading
and speaking skills. Reading materials are regarded as a useful source for oral
IX


presentations when students can get information as well as ideas from these
materials for discussion and presentation.
Besides, reading also helps students to approach the target culture. It is stated
by Richard (1992, p.4) as follows: “reading in the new language is also an important
way to learn about the target culture”. In details, reading is regarded as a significant
way for students to get knowledge of the target culture as lifestyle, behaviors,
thoughts, custom of the native people.
In short, “reading is the most important activity in any language class, not
only as a source of information and pleasurable activity, but also as a means of
consolidating and extending one’s knowledge of the language” (Rivers, 1981,
p.147). In addition, reading also reinforces students’ other language skills and
becomes a source of interesting knowledge of different culture for students.
2.3.2. Stages of a reading lesson
Many linguists all share the same view point that each reading lesson is
divided into three stages which are pre-reading stage, while-reading stage and postreading stage (William, 1984; Dubin & Bycina, 1991; Phillips, 1985). William
(1984) also indicates that each of these stages carries its own features and requires
different techniques and strategies.
Firstly, pre-reading stage is the first core step of the process of each reading

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