HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2
FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

TRINH THI THANH HUONG

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES
IN EXTENSIVE READING IN CLASS K43A EFL
(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN CỦA SINH VIÊN CỦA LỚP
K43A SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH
TRONG VIỆC SỬ DỤNG ĐỌC MỞ RỘNG)
Major: English Language Teaching

Hanoi, 2019


HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2
FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

TRINH THI THANH HUONG

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES
IN EXTENSIVE READING IN CLASS K43A EFL
(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN CỦA SINH VIÊN CỦA LỚP
K43A SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH
TRONG VIỆC SỬ DỤNG ĐỌC MỞ RỘNG)
Major: English Language Teaching

Main Supervisor: TRAN THI NGAN
Co – Supervisor: DO THI THANH DUNG

Hanoi, 2019

like to express my sincere appreciation to them. This research could not have
been completed without the wise guidance and hearty support from my
supervisors and teachers. I have the knowledge and courage to employ statistics
in my study.
I would like to thank Miss. Hoa, my friend, for sharing her opinion to
make my study better and giving comments that greatly improved the
manuscript.
I am also thankful to Hang, Trinh, Phuong, my sincere friends, for
enlightening me on critical analysis of participant’s views. It is truly fortunate of
me to have experienced not only their academic but also their help.
I would like to take this opportunity to express gratitude to my parents for
the unceasing encouragement, support and attention.
Also, I would like to express my gratitude to 25 students who participated
voluntarily in this study.
And, I also place on record, my sense of gratitude to one and all, who
directly or indirectly, have given me their hand in this study.


TABLE OF CONTENT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ......................................................................................
TABLE OF CONTENT ..........................................................................................
ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... 1
ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................... 2
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... 3
CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1. The Definition of Extensive Reading: ........................................................... 5
2.2. The Distinction between IR and ER............................................................... 6
2.3. Effects of Extensive Reading ......................................................................... 8
CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY ...................................................................... 10

intervention was conducted in the same language as the students’ core reading
instruction (English). Twenty - five the second - grade students from the class
K43A EFL at Hanoi Pedagogical University 2 were invited to participate in this
study. They, under the guideline of the lecturer, applied Extensive reading in
studying English 3 months ago. The researcher investigated their obstacles and
challenges when experiencing this application during class. The study pointed
out that there are at least six problems that make learners difficult in using
Extensive reading. Besides, the number of students in class is also a reason
causing out of control for teachers to ensure the quality of this application
project. It is hoped that the findings will be the suggestions for enhancing the
experiences of students who use Extensive Reading as part of their L2 learning
if applied.
Key words: Extensive reading, challenges, difficulties, learning language.

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ABBREVIATIONS

ER:

Extensive Reading

ESL:

English as a Second Language

EFL:

English as a Foreign Language

1.1 The rationale and significance of the study
In reality, for a student studying English as a foreign language, it can be seen
that there are few opportunities to approach English input outside of the
classroom due to the teachers of traditional teaching methods. Most of the
teachers in their language classrooms apply the intensive reading (IR): careful
reading of shorter and more difficult foreign language texts. In fact, this
technique is appropriate for serving for tests. As the result, many teachers
admitted failing to make the students acquire their target language. To overcome
this problem, a number of teachers, in recent years, have used extensive reading
(ER) as an effective technique for improving students’ foreign language
acquisition in their classes. Extensive reading is generally understood: read a
large amount of materials for the purpose of getting an overall understanding,
read for enjoyment.
Extensive reading is considered to be successful program that can help
students learn the foreign language. In Extensive reading, thanks to reading a lot
of books, journals and research papers that contain comprehensible inputs,
readers get more anxieties for the meaning of the text rather than the meaning of
individual words and sentences. There have been a number of previous
researches that carried out in order to study applying ER to language acquisition.
Nuttall (1982) noted that “the best way to improve your knowledge of a foreign
language is to go and live among its speakers and the next best way is to read
extensively in it”. Reading these kind of materials can enrich the students’
cultural background by making interaction with the target culture. Also,
according to Yamashita (2015), it has now been well-established that ER has a
positive impact on cognitive and affective domains of reading in L2. In addition,
many experts have claimed that extensive reading holds the key to improving
learners’ reading ability, vocabulary acquisition, grammar and other skills. A
further benefit of extensive reading is students’ positive attitudes toward reading
might increase. As Sweet (2000) pointed out that an “effective reading



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CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. The Definition of Extensive Reading:
Palmer (1927, as cited in Smith, 2003, p. 454), the originator of the term
defined that extensive reading means “rapid reading”. People, who apply this
language approach, are able to read texts written in the foreign language with
understanding and without looking up the dictionary frequently. Palmer
considered the frequent use of a dictionary for learning a language as a vicious
linguistic practice. Also, Williams (1984, p. 10) explained extensive reading as
the relatively rapid reading of long texts. Besides, West (1955, p. 189) referred
to the purpose of reading extensively: “to confer greater facility in the use of the
vocabulary already gained, to give the child a sense of achievement and a taste
of the pleasure to be derived from his accomplishment”. In Longman Dictionary
of Language teaching and Applied Linguistics, Extensive reading is defined as a
skill that is “intended to develop good reading habits, to build up knowledge of
vocabulary and structure, and to encourage a liking for reading” (Richards, Platt,
&Platt, 1992, p. 133). Susser and Robb (1990) gave the definition of extensive
reading using criteria. Extensive reading means reading a large quantity of
material or long texts; reading for global or general understanding; and reading
with the intention of obtaining pleasure from the text, which is important for
language learning. Hedge (2000: 2002) stated extensive reading with the special
characteristics:
• Reading large quantities of material such as short stories and novel,
newspaper and magazine articles, or professional reading.
• Reading consistently over time on a frequent and regular basis.
• Reading longer texts (more than a few paragraphs in length) of the

methods work learning language as occurring through practical perusing and
composing circumstances. Firstly, IR approach deals with short texts under a
teacher‘s guidance for detailed understanding. The Intensive reading technique is
reading for a high degree of comprehension and achievement for over a long period
of time. Sometimes, this approach is also called as sub-skills approach, which
divides reading skill into several sub-skills. Munby (1978) pointed nineteen
detailed skills such as: recognizing the script language, deducing the meaning, use
of unfamiliar lexical items, etc. As a result, this approach is applied for testing a lot.
However, dividing language skill into too many details not only is unlike reading in
the mother tongue, but also destroys the nature of language. Secondly, Extensive
reading deals with relatively long

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texts. Pleasure, information and general understanding are the purposes of
extensive reading. Having a balanced approach between these two is the most
essential element in any foreign language reading program. So what are the
differences between intensive and extensive reading? Schorhbuker (2008, p. 2)
noted that: there are several differences between these two reading approaches.
Waring (2006) proposes the difference between intensive and extensive reading
approaches in a visual way based on Welch‘s model (1998) (Table 1.1.).
First of all, pay attention to the peculiarities of intensive reading and then
examine those of extensive reading.

Intensive Reading
Analysis
language

ofthe


Mostly at home

WHERE

Checked by specific COMPREHENSION
questions

Checked by reports/ summaries

Table 2.1. Intensive and Extensive reading approaches
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It is informative to bring into the comparison between Intensive Reading
and Extensive Reading. In reality, teachers should apply both IR and ER method
in teaching, because the relationship between these methods is complementary
to each other. IR, the type of reading most often found in foreign language
learning programs, is a technique used to provide new words, and to be
appropriate for serving for tests. In intensive reading, students work with much
shorter texts, materials under the guidance of the teacher in shorter terms than in
extensive reading. All of the students in a class have the same material despite of
having different levels. The aim of intensive reading is to help students construct
detailed meaning of the text; to develop reading skills, such as identifying
general and specific ideas and recognizing text signals, analyzing the language
in short texts; and enhancing their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar.
Meanwhile, when teachers apply ER to students in foreign language class, it can
not only enhance the background knowledge deeply, consolidate the academic
one, but also raise their enjoyment of reading which leads to reading fluency. In
extensive reading approach, students are involved in group discussion where

students exhibited an increase in reading speed and vocabulary acquisition over
a semester (14 weeks). The improvement of reading speed was equivalent to an
improve from 235 to 327 words per minute. Last but not least, Mason and
Krashen (1997) performed three successive extensive reading experiments with
various groups of college students in Japan. The findings indicated that
extensive reading can increase EFL learners’ performance in English as
measured by pre- and post cloze tests *.
In the context, there are many studies that have been done on applying ER
for the ESL. However, there has not been many researches investigating to the
EFL to evaluate its effectiveness in the language acquisition. Moreover,
previous studies have not focused on exploiting the factors affecting the success
of applying this method in EFL. The researcher believes that the implementation
of this research is necessary to initially find out the factors that influence the
success of the project applying Extensive reading in English classes.
To sum up, these studies convey the notion that as long as an extensive
reading program is conducted by following the implementation guidelines well,
EFL learners are likely to benefit from it. Among the guidelines are the
principles of providing learners with reading materials that they can comprehend
with ease and are interested in reading.

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CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY

3.1. Participants

25 university students of K43 English Teaching Languge at Hanoi
Pedagogical University 2 were involved in the study. They are now the second–

Extensive Reading in class. By the interview method,

the teacher’s opinions

will be gathered through her voices. In reality, the results of this study could be
in validity. Going with using the questionnaire as a tool, interview method will
help the researcher have more authentic documents and basis, and get more
ideas from stakeholders. As a result, the students’ weakness, challenges as well
as the teaher’s obstacles in applying this method in class were shown more
clearly. The questions in this study were accepted from an earlier study by two
teachers Mrs. Nguyen Thi Dieu Ha and Mr. Pham Hoang Long Bien, from
Hanoi National University.

3.3. Procedures

This research began in the week of December, 26th, 2018. In the first week of
class, the teacher introduced either the extensive reading of graded readers or
Internet extensive reading to respective groups. The introduction included the
purpose of the extensive reading program, students’ expected amount of reading
per week and related assignments, and a suggested list of graded readers for the
group of linear text and Web sites of narrative stories for the group of multimodal
text. Then students were given the informed consent form to read, ask questions
about, ask them to be participants. After eleven weeks, the researcher gave
participants a questionnaire to survey their problems, and challenges during the
process of applying Extensive Reading in learning English.

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3.4. Description of intervention

Always

Mostly

Sometimes

bitlittleA

Hardly
1. Vocabulary in the material very difficult
and I have to look up them in the dictionary.

0%

20% 48% 20% 12%

0%

28% 40% 20% 12%

0%

16% 68% 12% 4%

12%

36% 32% 20% 0%

4%



0%

8%

28% 48% 16%

4%

16%

32% 48% 0%

16% 16%

52% 16% 0%

7. I myself choose the appreciate materials
that are on my level with.
8. All students in class are interested in my
presentations when I share them my opinions
about the materials.
9. Discussing the content of the materials I
read with my friends is effective
10. I understand the content of the materials
clearly, so I am confident to present for other
students.

Table 4.1. Percentages of students’ problems during applying ER in class


suitable for their abilities accounts for 48% of the 25 respondents. However,
they received enthusiastic help from teachers when they had difficulties in
reading the material. The figures 40% and 16% represent that the rate of
students who mostly and always receive the help of teachers, respectively.

Regardless of the tremendous benefits of the application Extensive reading
in improving the reading ability of learners, this method also brings many
difficulties and challenges for them. When overcoming difficulties, at least those
above factors, they can succeed in make learning language better, thanks to this
extensive reading method.
In the nutshell, the study has found six factors, including to the text
difficulty, peer cooperation, materials selection, teachers’ role, self- selecting
reading materials, and classroom activities that influence on the success of
applying extensive reading for English learners in K43EFL class. Based on the
positive feedback of this group of students, we continued to examine what
factors students are most struggling with, so that they can find a solution to
improve their extended reading in the classroom.

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100%
90%
80%
70%
Classroom Activities

60%

Self- selecting materials

difficult because many topics are not familiar with me. I sometimes
misunderstand and cannot guess the meaning, even though I tried a lot.” This

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can be clearly seen, because in the above survey questionnaire, more than 72%
of the participants admitted that they had to look up the dictionary many times
when reading the document, and could not understand the meaning of the
paragraph, even though examined the meaning of each word.
In the above table, the factor stands on the second most difficult position
for the learner is the self- selecting reading material, with 28%. It is a positive
side that giving a chance for students to actively and freely search for materials
and topics to practice reading. This will help to ensure that students will read the
right materials which are appropriate to their own preferences. However, this
becomes difficult when they themselves do not select materials that are matched
with their foreign language proficiency. Meanwhile, the total rate of number of
participants choosing the 2nd position for the material selection for the students
of the teacher, and for the teachers' help is the same, with 20%. The reason is
that a large number of topics and resources cause students to be overwhelmed or
confused when selecting materials without the guidance. Teachers must manage
and train a large number of students at the same time. This makes their work
overload, so that they cannot help all students in the most detailed and perfect
way.
The fourth most difficult factor for students in the process of applying
Extensive reading in learning English is peer cooperation, including group work,
discussions, and presentation. This accounts for 68% of the total number of
participants. Having explain for this choice, one of the participants, said: “Group
work is not effective. It sometimes makes me a burden. Members in my group
sometimes do not pay attention to my discussion”.


Figure4. 2. The percentage of factors making the application Extensive reading in teaching
English difficult.

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After interviewing the lecturer who had applied the extensive reading
method in the classroom, the researcher was surprised about the results she
obtained. Based on the graph showing the proportion of factors that made it
difficult for the teacher in applying this method to students, it can be seen that
the teacher in class K43A did not have difficulties in the low language level of
the student, and the limited time because of the allocation of the schedule at the
same time for second year students. She, also, had no difficulty in finding
materials that were appropriate for each student's level. The study continued to
investigate, and found a factor that made it difficult for her to apply. That is the
number of students in the same class too large, about 25 students or more. For a
period of 150 minutes per week, she had to control and care for a relatively large
number of students. She proposed a solution that is dividing the class into small
groups to organize activities and control easilier. Looking at the fact of class
K43A, the class is conducted research, we can propose a solution for teachers
easier to apply this method to teaching activities. Classes should be organized in
smaller size, so that the performance and efficiency will be improved.

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