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

LỤC THỊ MỸ BÌNH

DEVELOPING MOTIVATION IN LEARNING ENGLISH
READING SKILL OF STUDENTS AT THIEU HOA HIGH
SCHOOL, THANH HOA PROVINCE
(PHÁT TRIỂN ĐỘNG LỰC HỌC KỸ NĂNG ĐỌC HIỂU
TIẾNG ANH CỦA HỌC SINH TRƯỜNG
THPT THIỆU HÓA, TỈNH THANH HÓA)
M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410
Cohort: K18
Supervisor: Đỗ Bá Quý, MEd.

HANOI, 2011


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

LỤC THỊ MỸ BÌNH

DEVELOPING MOTIVATION IN LEARNING ENGLISH
READING SKILL OF STUDENTS AT THIEU HOA HIGH
SCHOOL, THANH HOA PROVINCE

the study’s limitations and suggestions for further study.
The results of the study show that in learning English reading skill, most of the
students at Thieu Hoa high school appeared to possess a combination of both instrumental and
integrative motivation; however, the instrumental orientation is stronger than the integrative
one. Besides, the sudy reveals that the reading materials and the teachers are the most
important factors affecting the students’ motivation. Therefore, the researcher suggests two
strategies to develop the students’motivation namely developing the reading materials and
improving the teachers’ role.


iii

Acknowledgements
First of all, I wish to acknowledge my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Mr. Do Ba
Quy, MEd for his valuable guidance, helpful suggestions and critical feedback throughout the
research, without which my research could not been completed.
I wish to send my sincere thanks to all the lecturers in the Faculty of Post-graduate
Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, VNU for their useful lessons from
which I have benefited a lot for the accomplishment of this study.
I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my students in three classes 11G, 11M,
11N and my colleagues at Thieu Hoa high school for their participation and assistance
without which this study could not have been successful.
My sincere thanks to my cousin, Ngo Khac Vi and my close friends who offered me
their help, care, support and encouragement during the time I study at Hanoi.
Finally, my love and thanks to my beloved family, especially my husband and my son
for not only their encouragement and support but also their whole-hearted help during my
research.

Thanh Hoa, August, 2011


4. Scopes of the study ......................................................................................................... 2
5. Methods of the study ...................................................................................................... 2
6. Design ofthe study .......................................................................................................... 3
7. Design of the study ......................................................................................................... 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT ......................................................................................4
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................... 4
1.1. Overview of motivation ............................................................................................... 4
1.1.1. Definitions of motivation ..................................................................................... 4
1.1.2. Types of motivation .............................................................................................. 4
1.1.2.1. Integrative vs. instrumental motivation ........................................................ 5
1.1.2.2. Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation................................................................... 5
1.1.2.3. Global, situational and task motivation ........................................................ 6
1.1.2.4. Resultative motivation .................................................................................. 6
1.1.3. Roles of motivation in second language learning ................................................ 7
1.2. Overview of reading .................................................................................................... 7
1.2.1. Definitions of reading .......................................................................................... 7
12.3. Roles of reading in foreign language learning ..................................................... 8
1.3. Motivation in learning reading ................................................................................... 9
1.3.1. The importance of motivation in learning reading .............................................. 9
1.3.2. Common factors affecting students’ motivation in learning reading skill ........... 10
1.3.2.1. The students ................................................................................................. 10
1.3.2.2. The teachers................................................................................................. 11
1.3.2.3. The reading materials .................................................................................. 12
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY..................................................................................... 13
2.1. The setting of the study ............................................................................................... 13


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2.2. Individuals participating in the study ........................................................................ 14


PART A: INTRODUCTION
This part presents the rationale for choosing the topic, the aims of the study, the
research questions, the scope, the methods, the significance and the design of the study in
order to help readers have a general view on the research.
1. Rationale for the study
In our modern society, English has become an international language for
communication and it is also an important demand for schooling and job opportunities. The
number of people who are learning English is increasing so quickly and English has been
learnt through many sources in many different ways.
It can be clearly seen that in Vietnam, we are mainly teaching and learning English
in non-language environment so reading is the main source to get knowledge of language
and life as well as to develop other skills. However, many learners of English are not
interested in learning reading. They often think that reading is the least important skill as it
does not help learners directly in communicating. On the other hand, learners also
complain that reading always makes them feel bored and stressful. So, it can be concluded
that our students lack of motivation to read. In fact, motivation is one of the most important
factors affecting the result of learning English. Students with high motivation can learn a
foreign language better than those who do not. Therefore, one of the first duties of English
teachers is motivating their students to read.
Because of the above reason, I do my research on “Developing motivation in
learning English reading skill of students at Thieu Hoa high school, Thanh Hoa province”,
hoping to find out some solutions to better the current situation of teaching and learning
English reading skill and hoping to help English teachers and students in general and those
at Thieu Hoa high school in particular in their teaching and studying.
2. Aims of the study
The study is aimed at:
- Identifying types of motivation possessed by students at Thieu Hoa high school in
learning reading skill.


which are based on the theoretical background and the current situation of teaching and
learning English reading skill at Thieu Hoa high school, hopefully can help English
teachers and students in general and those at Thieu Hoa high school in particular in their
teaching and studying.


3

6. Methods of the study
The theoretical background of the study mainly bases on references and analysis to
relevant theories about motivation and reading of many authors. The study is carried out on
the basis of survey questionnaires and interview.
Firstly, for the theoretical basis, a lot of reference materials on motivation and
reading have been gathered, analyzed and synthesized thoroughly with the clue
consideration for the teachers’ and students’ teaching and learning situations.
Secondly, for the practical basis, interviews and questionnaires are carried out with
teachers and students of English to gather the most reliable data for the thesis.
7. Design of the study
The study is organized in three parts:
Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, the aims of the study, the research
questions, the scope of the study, the significance of the study, the methods of the study
and the design of the study.
Part B: Development includes three chapters
Chapter 1: Literature review provides theoretical backgrounds for the study. Its
focus is on introducing important relevant concepts, discussions of issues and ideas on
theories for motivation, nature of reading and motivation in learning reading as well as
factors affecting motivation in learning reading.
Chapter 2: The methodology presents the methods used in the study including the
setting of the study, participants of the study, data collection instruments, data collection
and data analysis procedure.

“Motivation can be constructed as a state of cognitive and emotional arousal, which
leads to a conscious decision to act, and which gives rise to period of sustained intellectual
and/or physical effort in order to attain a previously set goal (or goals)” (William,
1997:120)
It is clear from the above definitions that different scholars approach motivation
definition differently. However, they all share the same point of view that motivation
combines effort and desire plus favorable attitude and occur as a result of combination of
external and internal influences.


5

1.1.2 Types of motivation
There are many different distinctions between types of motivation such as:
integrative vs. instrumental motivation (Gardner and Lambert, 1972); intrinsic vs. extrinsic
motivation (Moore, K.D., 1992); global, situational and task motivation (Brown, H.D,
1990); instrumental, intergrative, resultative and intrinsic (Ellis, R., 1994)... Regarding all
classifications of motivation, after all, the study based mainly on the distinction proposed
by Gardner and Lambert (1972).
1.1.2.1 Integrative vs. instrumental motivation


Integrative motivation: In a pioneering study, Gardner and Lambert (1972: 132)

highlights “integrative motivation” which stresses “a sincere and personal interest in the
people and culture represented by the other group”. Gardner’s later socio-educational
model (1982) adds three aspects of student motivation: effort (time and drive), desire
(extent of language proficiency wished for) and effect (emotional reactions to language
study). Integrative motivation is the desire on the part of the student to feel an affinity with
the people, the society and the culture of the language that is learned, and is usually

activities”. The factors of support of intrinsic motivation are: competence (feeling that you
know how to do things), autonomy (being able to perform an activity by yourself without
external help) and relatedness (connection with your social environment like helping the
others)


Extrinsic motivation comes from sources external to the student and the task. It can

come through praise, recognition, or a system of rewards. For example, for students who
do not enjoy reading, a token economy involving stickers or a class store may prompt them
to read more often.
Paul (2002) states that extrinsic motivation is “motivation to engage in an activity
as means to an end”. Moore (1992) gives easily understandable definition that “extrinsic
motivation originates outside the individual and is concerned with external environments
factors that help shape students’ behavior”
Most writers agree that intrinsic and extrinsic interact with each other and play an
important role in second language learning. As a result, learners can be either motivated by
internal or external factors depending on the circumstances and conditions the activity is
performed.
1.1.2.3 Global, situational and task motivation
Brown (1990) identified three types of motivation:
Global motivation consists of general orientation to the global of L2 learning.
Situational motivation is different according to the situation in which learning takes
place. Thus the motivation in classroom setting differs from that in naturalistic learning.
Task motivation is the motivation learners get when they are performing some
particular tasks in learning performance.
1.1.2.4 Resultative motivation
In some cases, motivation is the result of learning. Hermann (1980) stated that ‘it is
success that contributes to motivation rather than vice- versa’ (cited in Ellis, 1997).


1.2.1 Definitions of reading
Most of us think of reading as a simple, passive process that involves reading
words in a linear fashion and internalizing their meaning one at a time. But reading is
actually a very complex process that requires a great deal of active participation on the part
of the reader. There are many definitions of reading from experts in the field.


8

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, “reading is a process of retrieving
and comprehending some form of stored information or ideas”.
Harmer (1994:190) says “reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the
brain. The eyes receive the message and the brain then has to work out the significance of
these messages”.
Sharing the same point of view, Aebersold and Field (1997:15) propose “reading is
what happens when people look at a text and assign meaning to the written symbol in that
text”.
Goodman (1971:153) sees reading as “a psycholinguistic process by which the
reader, a language user, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded
by a writer as a graphic display”.
As we can see, all the authors share the same idea that reading means
comprehending written language and it involves a variety of skills.
1.2.2 Roles of reading in foreign language learning
As we know, reading is one of the major skills of learning a second or foreign
language and it has a prominent position in the design of a foreign language teaching
programme. Krashen & Terrel (1983:131) state that “Reading may contribute significantly
to competence in a second language. There is good reason, in fact, to hypothesize that
reading makes a contribution to overall competence, to all four all four skills”.
Firstly, reading benefits grammatical knowledge and vocabulary development and
therefore overall competence increases. According to Geoff (2000:16), reading “may help

of comprehension but also upon the process of understanding. According to David (1999),
“motivation is one of the most important ingredients in skilled reading”. If we show no
interest in the text, it means that we do not want to read then the reading activity will
become a pressure to ourselves and even the reading process may not happen at all. In
reality, most of what we read such as books, magazines, advertisements, etc is what we
really want to read.
Reading motivation refers to the desire to read even when not required to do so.
Reading motivation involves seeking out opportunities to read for curiousity, knowledge
and involvement. Reading researchers recognized that in order to create lifelong readers,
endowing the learners with proficient reading skills are not enough. They also need to have
internalized motivation. Reader’s motivation has been shown to relate to the quality of the
outcome of reading. Many studies have shown that bad readers lack motivation to read or
to spend time improving their ability to read. Therefore, it is neccessary to improve reader
motivation.


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1.3.2 Common factors affecting students’ motivation in learning reading skill
1.3.2.1 The students
Students’ themselves are the first and most important factor affecting their
motivation in learning reading.
Firstly, the students’ attitude toward reading has a great impact on reading
motivation. Aebersold and Field (1997:39) say that: “The more interested people are, the
more they will preserve in reading”. If students show no interest in the text, it means that
they do not want to read then the reading activity will become a pressure to them and even
the reading process may not happen at all. In reality, most of what we read such as books,
magazines, advertisements, etc is what we really want to read. So it can be concluded that
the degree of interest has its influence on reading motivation.
Besides, the students’ background knowledge also dominates their motivation to

the subject and the students, would be capable of keeping students interested in reading.
The teachers can raise the students’ love for reading by their rapport with the students,
their personality themselves because they are the ones of students’ respect and can affect
them a great deal.
Finally, the way the teacher assesses and evaluates the students’ progress also
influences their motivation in learning the subject. The teacher should not compare the
performance of a student to that of the others but encourage and create a supportive
environment for them to put more effort. It is advisable to evaluate their progress with
themselves in order to make them more self – confident and motivated.
1.3.2.3 The reading materials
The reading materials play an important role to students’ motivation in reading in
terms of its level of challenge, its topic and content. Reading materials that are interesting
and relevant to the students will motivate them to read.
Firstly, reading materials should have suitable topics and contents, this means, the
texts should interest the students. Nuttal (1982:70) points out that “the texts that are
considered suitable will tell the students things they do not know and introduce them to
new and relevant ideas”. In the case the topic of the text is not interesting and irrelevant to
their experience and knowledge they may stop reading because they can not understand the
meaning of the text enough to satisfy their expectations, need or interests. In general, if
students enjoy what they read, the reading comprehension is the best achieved.
Secondly, reading materials’ language items such as vocabulary and grammatical
structures also have an impact on the students’ motivation. The students would also be
frustrated and tired when encountering with a great deal of unknown words, complex
sentence structures and so on. In terms of linguistic items, the vocabulary in the reading


12

text must be of appropriate level with suitable density of idioms. The complexity of
grammar must not be too great. Besides, the background of the text must be within the

curriculumn (since 2006) of The Ministry of Education and Training. All the students learn
the set of basic program textbooks Tieng Anh 10, Tieng Anh 11, Tieng Anh 12 which
includes the total of 315 periods of 45 minutes in the class. It means that students have 3
classes of English per week, equivalents with 105 classes per school year.
Reading skill is taught 16 periods per school year, in which students read 16
different texts of the six themes: You and me, Education, Community, Nature and
environment, Recreation, People and places. Students are trained to improve such reading
strategies as: skimming for gist, scanning for specific information, drawing conclusion,
making inferences and restatements, writing summaries.
In Thieu Hoa high school, the English group has 8 teachers. The oldest teachers
have more than 25 years of teaching experience and the youngest ones have more than five
years of experience. All of them are very enthusiastic and willing to apply better methods
to upgrade their teaching quality.


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2.2 Participants of the study
The study was carried out with the participation of 115 students of grade 11 at
Thieu Hoa high school. They are at the age of 17-18 and have learnt English for (at least) 4
years at secondary school and one more year at Thieu Hoa high school. Of the 115
participants, 62 students (53.9%) are female and 53 students (46.1%) are male. All of them
are living in the countryside and have not many chances to approach English language
except reading their textbooks.
Besides, seven teachers of English at Thieu Hoa high school were also invited to
take part in this study by answering the survey questionnaire. Among them, two teachers
are male and the others are female. All of them have been teaching English at the school
for years.
2.3 Data collection instruments
To obtain the information for the study, the researcher used three instruments.

(Dornyei, Z. 2005: 10- 13). This is true for the study of motivation, which is an abstract,
attitudinal concept. Therefore, the interviews were carried out with six participants in a
following week after processing the questionnaire for students. The aim of the researcher
for interviews is to get better insights into the research questions and to discuss for further
information about the items raised in the questionnaires. The participants were invited to
answer the questions with the researcher’s explanation of the questions and clarifying
unclear answers, each interview lasted about 20 minutes. The informal talks were
sometimes done between the researcher and students at English lesson break to have indepth understanding about the teaching method teachers had just applied and students’
preferences.
The questions for interviews were compiled in a paper sheet. All the interviews
were carried out in Vietnamese in the form of an informal conversation between the
researcher and the students. The data collected from interview were recorded, transcribed,
and then translated into English for the purposes of the study.
2.4 Data collection procedures
The data of the study was collected mainly through reference books and relevant
theories about motivation and reading, interviews and survey questionnaires.
First, all collected relevant theories about motivation and reading were studied,
consolidated and categorized then organized suitably in parts.


16

Second, the survey to the teachers was delivered to seven teachers of English at
Thieu Hoa high school, and they had one week to complete it.
Next, with the permission of the Head master and teachers of English at Thieu Hoa
high school, the researcher had a personal contact to 115 students of three 11-form classes
in order to clarify the purpose of the survey and administered the questionnaire delivered to
these students. The students were asked to complete the questionnaire within 30 minutes.
At last, the interviews were carried out with six participants in a following week
after processing the questionnaire for students. The aim of the researcher for interviews is

Table 1: Participants by age and gender

Age

Number of participants

Percentage
Total

(%)

Male

Female

17

53

60

113

98.3

18

0

2

6-7

8-9

Number of students

87

24

4

Percentage

75.7%

20.8%

3.5%

Among seven teachers participated in the study, there were only two male teachers.
The teachers’ ages ranged from 28 to 55. Their experience in teaching English varied from
7 to 30 years. All of them had been teaching both the old and the new sets of English
textbooks so they had many experience in teaching reading
3.2 Data analysis and major findings
3.2.1 The identification of students’ motivation
3.2.1.1 Types of students’ motivation
The data obtained from the questionnaire for students will be analyzed to find out
the answer to the research question one: “What are the types of motivation possessed by
students at Thieu Hoa high school in learning reading skill?”