PART I:

INTRODUCTION

1. REASON FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC:
Nowadays, English plays an integral part in our society. It appears as a
tool, a means of communication. It helps people in different cultures, with
different languages can understand one another. Not only is English an essential
means in international communication but it is also a job which can help us get
a lot of money. Estimates vary about how many people speak English
worldwide but some believe English-speakers are likely to number in the
billions. English crosses cultures, countries and industries and is often used as a
‘common tongue’ if neither person is a native speaker. This means teaching
people English can be truly rewarding – because students of English have so
many new opportunities and doors open to them thanks to their skills. With its
such high roles, English now becomes the compulsory subject in the National
Curriculum and is the obligatory subject in all examinations in Viet Nam.
With the changes in the National Exam for Upper Secondary Education
these recent years, reading comprehension covers 50 % of total content of the
exam paper. It includes 3 small parts: gap filling, reading comprehension 1,
reading comprehension 2. The content and topics of reading tasks in the exam
mostly focus on those students learn in reading passage – English 12. The
ability in doing these reading tasks depends on what they get and how they learn
from English 12 – Reading comprehension.
In National Curriculum for English – upper secondary education, 7- yearperiod, especially in grade 12, students face up to a huge amount of information,
knowledge and skills. For the teachers ourselves, we meet a lot of difficulties in
teaching a great amount of knowledge, whichever is also important and can
appear in a test. The topics in Reading text – English 12 spread over a large
number of fields such as cultures, history, science… whereas some teachers still
lack general knowledge in some fields as well as being short of material sources
to get to know. As a result, we get barriers in leading the lesson (Warm – up).

mostly focus on some changes in the tasks in each period, so that I can help my
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students get better result in learning reading comprehension. My theme “ Some
ways to redesign the activities in teaching reading comprehension of the
12th English at Quang Xuong 1 High School” aims at helping students easily
do the tasks they are given in each lesson, and better understand the whole
reading passage. Consequently, they can improve their skill in reading
comprehension. I want to use this theme for further study and then share with
other colleagues, so that in some extend, helping them as a source of reference
material in their teaching career.
2.

AIMS OF THE STUDY:

In this paper, I will discuss briefly the tenets of reading comprehension, the
cognitive tasks involved in reading as well as the various activities teachers use
in teaching reading comprehension. By redesigning some activities for tasks in
textbook – English 12, teacher can help students approach the reading skill
effectively, according to the process: PPP
Presentation  Practice  Production
If this is done well, learners can build their language competence, progress in
their reading ability, become more independent in their studies, acquire cultural
knowledge, and develop confidence and motivation to carry on learning.
3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY:
Reading texts in Textbook English 12 with students at Quang Xuong 1 High
school.
4. METHODS OF STUDY:
My work bases on some basic methods below:

-

the ability to adapt the reading style according to reading purpose (i.e.
skimming, scanning)

- developing an awareness of the structure of written texts in English
2. THE ACTUAL SITUATION:
Different levels and intellectual abilities of learners are also real hurdle,
which make most teachers find difficult in applying methods in imparting
knowledge. This inspires us ceaselessly to try to look for solutions.
Besides, some teachers find it hard to teach some reading contents that refer
to such field they themselves are not familiar.
3. THEORY:
3.1. DESCRIPTION OF THE SUBJECT:
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Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its
meaning, and to integrate it with what the reader already knows. Fundamental
skills required in efficient reading comprehension are knowing meaning of
words, ability to understand meaning of a word from discourse context, ability
to follow organization of passage and to identify antecedents and references in
it, ability to draw inferences from a passage about its contents, ability to identify
the main thought of a passage, ability to answer questions in a passage, ability
to recognize the literary devices or propositional structures used in a passage
and determine its tone, to understand the situational mood (agents, objects,
temporal and spatial reference points, casual and intentional inflections, etc.)
conveyed for assertions, questioning, commanding, refraining etc. and finally
ability to determine writer's purpose, intent and point of view, and draw
inferences about the writer (discourse-semantic).

- Types of reading skill can be chosen
- How to approach the content of the lesson
3.2.2. Procedure:
Contemporary reading tasks, unlike the traditional materials, involve three
phase procedures: pre-, while-, and post- reading stages. In each stage, teacher
must organize some activities in order to solve the duties.
a. Pre – reading activities:
The pre-reading stage helps in activating the relevant schema. Most teachers
tend to neglect the pre-reading procedure claiming that there is not enough time.
In fact, pre-reading activities motivate students before the actual reading takes
place. For example, teachers can ask students questions that arouse their interest
while previewing the text. Drucker (2003) suggests the following procedure
teachers can take before reading a text:
“…relate the passage students are going to read to something that is
familiar to them. Next, provide a brief discussion question that will engage the
students and, after that, provide an overview of the section they are about to
read. Name the selection, introduce the characters, and describe the plot (up to,

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but not including, the climax). Last, direct the students to read the story and
look for particular information.”
Similarly, Abraham (2002) states that an interactive approach “demands that
the teachers activate the students’ schema” during the pre-reading phase by
helping “students recognize the knowledge that they already have about the
topic of a text” (p. 6), i.e. through discussion of titles, subheadings,
photographs, identifying text structure, previewing, etc. Such activities are
called “pre-reading strategies”. As Orasanu (1986) explicates the notion of
“schema” (or background knowledge) which “… can be thought of as a

5. Getting detailed information,
6. Answering pre-set questions,
7. Matching text with pictures diagrams etc.,
This stage is to check students whether they understand the lesson or not
through some tasks, which are done during the reading activity or after that. The
tasks in this stage are various:



Choose the sentence A,B, or C that is nearest meaning to the given
sentence.



Answer the questions.



Explain the meaning of the italicized words/ phrases in the following
sentences.



Give Vietnamese equivalents to the following words/ phrases.



Decide whether the following statements are true(T) or false(F).



teacher can introduce matching through lines. For extra practice students can
copy their matching word slips onto another sheet of paper.
The activities in this stage include:
+ Summarize the passage, based on the years: 1967, 1998,…
+ Summarized the reading passage by writing ONE sentence for each
paragraph.
+ Fill in each space of the following paragraph with a suitable word.
+ Make a comparison between……
+ Discuss the advantages of….
+ Scan the passage and make brief notes.
+ Discuss the questions.
3.3. DATA ANALYSIC
3.3.1.Learners’ Analysis
Question one: What is your purpose from reading?
Most of learners (52%) said that their purpose from reading is to enrich
their general knowledge, while (20%) state that their objective from reading is
to enlarge their vocabulary knowledge, the same percentage is the answer of
reading for the sake of answering needs related to their studies, while only
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(8%) claim that they read for pleasure. For the purpose of knowing the kinds
of materials that learners’ best prefer this question was asked.
Question two: what will you do if you do not understand when reading?
( 32%) of the informants state that when they read and do not understand they
try to translate to their mother tongue which is Arabic, while (32%) answered
that they carry on reading without understanding, and (24%) of the participants
said that they use the dictionary. Only (13%) of them stop reading when they
do not understand the reading materials at hand.
Some of the participants add that they ask the teacher or their classmates

Information and Communication Technologies, that is why the following
writing seeks to present some suggestions and solutions in order to expand the
learners’ vocabulary knowledge, and thus to lead to a better comprehension
while reading. 4. SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS TO IMPROVE
STUDENTS’ ABILITIES IN READING COMPREHENSION SKILL:
4.1.

Before - you - read activities:

These tasks are important for both teachers and learners, because they
prepare students for the text they are going to read. In this respect, Abraham
(2002) maintains that an interactive approach demands that the teachers should
activate the students’ schemata during the pre-reading phase by helping them
recognize their prior knowledge about the topic of the text. From my own
experience, I suggest some pre-reading activities, which are mostly used to
arouse students’ own interests and take advantage of their own knowledge of the
topic.
Example 1:

Unit 1: HOME LIFE – Part A: READING

By the end of the lessons, Students will be able to talk about home life
and discuss the role of each member in the family.
Instead of using questions in textbook, the teacher gives students handout, with
the following model:
Activities

Mother

Wash the dishes

Handout: Match a question in column A with an appropriate answer in
column B:
Questions
1. What are you going to do after

Answers
a. At the job center I can find out the

finishing university?
2. Where can you find out the

information about jobs/ vacancy.
b. I have to bring certificates and

information about jobs?
3. What do you find out at the job

letter of recommendation.
c. I do these things to prepare a job

center = an employment agency?
4. What kind of paper do you need to

interview.
d. I think I will look for a job.

apply for a job?
5. What do you bring with you to an

e. Questions and answers must be

quite difficult. To teach new words, teacher can use the following activity:
Handout: What will our life be like in the future? Put a tick () in the right
column if you agree or disagree with the ideas below.
Ideas

agree

disagre
e

1

The whole world will experience a period of

2

economic depression (kinh tế trì trệ )
Many large coporations will be wiped out (bị xoá

3

sổ) and millions of jobs will be lost.
Terrorist (kẻ khủng bố) will kill other people with

4

no reasons and become more powerful.
Domestic chores will no longer be a burden (gánh
nặng) thanks to the inventions of labour-saving


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8

Spacecraft = space-shuttle (tµu vò trô con thoi)
designed to be used for travelling between the earth

9

and a space station.
Cars will run on anything from electricity to methane
gas (khÝ mª-tan)
This activity helps students get over nearly the whole passage before they

really practice reading it. Through learning new words, they can imagine the
main ideas of the text, then get its content more easily.
4.2.

While - reading activities:

Example 1:

Unit 4: SCHOOL EDUCATION SYSTEM – Part A :

READING
By the end of the lesson, students can know exactly about school education
system in England.
Handout: Read the passage again and decide whether statements are true (T)
or false (F):

Unit 1: HOME LIFE – Part A: READING

The task in this lesson is answering three questions. For me, this task is
not really well- made, as the answers may be very long. It’s the reason I replace
it with the following task. To do this task, students just read the whole passage,
get the main points and then answer by taking note, not the whole sentences.
Handout: Read the text again and find out details that prove that:
1. The mother is a caring person.
………………………………………………………………………………….
2. The father is a helpful man.
………………………………………………………………………………….
3. The daughter is a good child.
………………………………………………………………………………….
4. This is a close-knit family.
………………………………………………………………………………….
Example 2:

Unit 2: CULTURAL DIVERSITY - part A: READING

After reading the passage, it is not really difficult for students to answer
the questions in Task 3. However, answering the questions is the traditional
method to check the understanding, which may make students feel repeated and
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bored. Instead, I give them a new way of checking. This type of task helps
students practice summarize the main ideas from what they have just read.
Handout: Fill in the table with the missing information:
Key values
Physical

just asks students to fill the missing information, then base on the sentences,
they can retell the whole passage.
Handout: Give missing information to talk about school education system in
England. And then give information to talk about school education system in
Vietnam.
School education system in England

School education system in

Vietnam
1. Children start Primary School when they 1. Children start Primary School
are……………….
2. A school year consists of……… terms.

when they are 6.
2.

They are………
3. The school year starts… and ends…

…………………………………
3. ………………………………
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4. There are………school systems.
4. ………………………………
5. Schooling is compulsory from at the age 5. ……………………………
of…………
6. English, Maths and Science are ……in

the passage. Using the handout, students can make a summary to speak out.

Example 6:

Unit 15: WOMEN IN SOCIETY – Part A: READING

This task asks students to summarize the text. To do it, students must understand
clearly the passage, as well as knowing how to use the words from the passage.
Handout: Work in groups to summarize the text by filling in the missing
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words:
Housewives
Unequal

Education
Power

Politics

Liberation

Women in the old society were considered to be (1)…………….. to men.
They played the roles of mothers and (2)……………….. only. They weren’t
allowed to work in business and (3)………. Therefore it was men who
controlled most positions of employment and (4) ………. In society.
Thanks to women’s (5)……….since the 18th century, women nowadays have
gained many legal rights equal to men. Among them, the most important are
the right to vote, the right to gain (6)……… and the right to get equal

vocabulary

knowledge,

and

better

reading

comprehension achievements.
Reading skill, with a lot of relating knowledge, is always difficult to
teachers ourselves. To find out a way to transfer this mass of knowledge to
students with high result is always a mission to us. Each teacher will find out for
herself a particular method. But the final aim is to help students understand and
apply what they have learnt to the real situations.
For me, after 10 years being a teacher of English at Quang Xuong 1 High
school, with a lot of students having been growing up, I finally find out one of
the ways to solve the problem of teaching reading skill in textbook English 12
that I have just presented above. I hope my above experiences can, more or less,
help my colleagues with their teaching, as well as learners who care for, with
their study.
Much as I tried, it’s impossible for me not to have some disadvantages
during my presentation in this study. I really hope to receive the sincere
contribution from the colleagues, as well as from the leaders in our teaching
branch, so that I can improve my experience and my teaching in the future.
2. PROPOSAL:
From the results I have got, I sincerely suggest some ideas:
- The teachers ourselves must work hard and continuously in order to find
out the new and good ways of teaching, then share with other teachers, organize

3.

Scope of the study…………………………………………... 3

4.

Methods of the study……………………………… ..……… 3

Part II: CONTENTS
1. Theoretical background………………………………………… 4
2. The actual situation ……………………………………………. 4
3. Patterns of the study …………………………………………… 4
3.1.

Description of the subject .................................................. 4

3.2.

Data collection and procedure ………………………….. 5

3.3.

Data analysis ……………………………………………

9

4. Suggestions for teachers to improve students’ ability in reading
comprehension skill…………………………………………… 11
5. Results ………………………………………………………...


Hướng dẫn Đọc hiểu Tiếng Anh
Vũ Thùy Linh
Gợi ý thiết kế bài dạy Reading – English Phạm Minh Trang
12
Reading in a second language :Process,

London. Longman.

Product and Practice.
Reading in the language classroom. Williams, E. (1996).
Modern English Publications.

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