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

NGUYỄN CHÍ DŨNG

ADVANCES IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS EMPLOYABLE
FOR THE TEACHING OF READING COMPREHENSION
TECHNIQUES TO FIRST YEAR STUDENTS
AT VIETTRONICS TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE
(Những thành tựu mới trong Anh ngữ học có thể ứng dụng vào việc giảng dạy
kĩ năng Đọc hiểu cho sinh viên năm thứ nhất
Trường Cao đẳng Công nghệ Viettronics)
M.A. Minor Thesis

Filed
Code

: English Teaching Methodology
: 60 14 10

HANOI - 2010


iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Declaration..............................................................................................................................i
Acknowledgement..................................................................................................................ii

1.4.1.3. Using extensive reading in the language class .......................................................12
1.5. Previous research studies...........................................................................................14
1.6. Summary......................................................................................................................15
CHAPTER 2: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CURRENT SITUATION OF
TEACHING AND LEARNING READING AT VIETTRONICS TECHNOLOGY
COLLEGE (VTC)..............................................................................................................17
2.1. Introduction.................................................................................................................17
2.2. An Overview on Viettronics Technology College....................................................17
2.3. Teachers and Teaching Methods...............................................................................18
2.4. Materials and Assessments.........................................................................................18
2.5. Data Collection, Findings and Discussion.................................................................19
2.5.1. Data Collection.........................................................................................................19
2.5.1.1. The Subject..............................................................................................................19
2.5.1.2. Data collection instruments.....................................................................................19
2.5.2. Data analysis and discussion...................................................................................20
2.5.2.1. Students’ attitudes towards the role of reading English to their learning and their
future career.........................................................................................................................20
2.5.2.2. Students’ attitude towards the reading text in Lifeline- Elementary book..............21
2.5.2.3. Students’ activities in reading.................................................................................22
2.5.2.3.1. Students’ activities in pre-reading........................................................................22
2.5.2.3.2. Students’ activities in while-reading....................................................................23
2.5.2.3.3. Students’ activities in post-reading......................................................................24
2.5.2.3.4. Teachers’ activities towards their students in the reading lesson.........................25
2.6. Summary......................................................................................................................27
CHAPTER 3: THE EMPLOYMENT OF EXTENSIVE READING AS A POSSIBLE
WAY OF TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION TECHNIQUES TO THE
FIRST YEAR STUDENTS AT VTC................................................................................28
3.1. Introduction.................................................................................................................28
3.2. The employment of extensive reading as a possible way of teaching reading
comprehension techniques to the first year students at VTC........................................28

ER: Extensive reading

FIGURES
Figure 1: The traditional types of reading
Figure 2: The general picture of advances in reading

TABLES
Table 1: Ten principles of extensive reading

CHARTS
Chart 1: Students’ attitudes towards the role of reading English to their learning and their
future career
Chart 2: Students’ attitude towards the reading text in Lifeline- Elemetary book.
Chart 3: Students’ activities in pre-reading
Chart 4: Students’ activities in while-reading
Chart 5: Students’ activities in post-reading
Chart 6: Teachers’ activities towards their students in the reading lesson.


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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale
In the modern time, when the world entered a new millennium, the tendency towards
globalization is an indispensable development. Therefore, the desire for having a mutual
understanding among the world economies, among the world citizens is becoming more
and more urgent.
Thanks to the globalization and the entry to the WTO, Viet Nam is striving to the growth
rate of world economy. Using English as a useful means of communication is really in

have to look up new words and write down everything the teachers explain. As a certain
result, they are tired of reading and their reading skills still keep stable.
For all above reasons, the researcher wishes to try some new advances to improve reading
skill for students, especially the first year students. And the writer’s thesis is:
“Advances in English Linguistics Employable for the Teaching of Reading Comprehension
Techniques to First Year Students at Viettronics Technology College”.
2. Aims and objectives of the study
2.1. Aims of the study
The purpose of this study is to investigate and survey the difficulties in reading
encountered by non – English students at Viettronics Technology College from that
Advances in English Linguistics Employable for the Teaching of Reading Comprehension
Techniques can be given to motivate and help them to improve reading skill.
The specific aims are:
+ To investigate into current situation of teaching and learning reading at VTC
+ To find out the difficulties encountered by non – English students at VTC
+ To give the employment of extensive reading as a possible way of teaching reading
comprehension techniques to the first year students at VTC
2.2. Objectives of the study
+ Data collection for the analysis from the first year students of classes in Economic
administration department at VTC:
+ Find out the dominant difficulties
+ Evaluate what advances in English linguistics employable for the teaching of reading
Comprehension Techniques are best suitable.


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3. Methods of the study
To get the aims of this study, the quantitative and qualitative research methods are used to
observe and obtain information on students’ attitude in reading lesson. Besides that Writer

Chapter 3: Gives the employment of extensive reading as a possible way of teaching
reading comprehension techniques to the first year students at VTC.
Part C: “Conclusion” summarizes what is obtained in this study and shows the limitations
and gives some suggestions for further study.

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1. Review of literature
1.1. Introduction
In this chapter, there are four sub-sections. The first section deals with the theoretical
background of reading skill including the definition of reading, reading comprehension,
reading process, types of reading and the purpose of reading. Especially, in the second
section some advances in

English linguistics employable for teaching of reading

comprehension techniques will be given and because of limited time, the researcher only
pay attention to one of these advances, extensive reading such as extensive reading
definition, extensive reading versus intensive reading, using extensive reading in the
language class and. The third section focuses on the previous research of extensive reading
on students’ reading. The fourth section summarizes this chapter.
1.2. An Overview on the Nature of Reading
1.2.1. Definition of reading
There are numerous of reading definitions as:
According to Goodman (1971: 135), reading is “a psycholinguistic process by which the
reader, a language users, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been
encoded by a writer as a graphic display”, and the act of reconstruction is viewed as “a
cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing and confirming”.



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1.2.3. Reading process
Kamil (1986) claims that there have been three general orientations of reading models:
bottom-up models (text – based), top- down models (reader – based), and interactive
models (balanced – models)
In bottom-up the reader begins with the written text and constructs meaning from letters,
words, phrases and sentences and then processes the text in a linear fashion as Kamil.
(1986: 73) says “the reader begins the reading process by analyzing the text in small units
and these units are built into progressively larger units until meaning can be extracted”.
In top-down processing, reader moves from the top, the higher level of mental stages to the
text itself. This model emphasizes the reconstruction of meaning rather than decoding of
form as well as the interaction between the reader and the text rather than the graphic
forms. As Researcher, Goodman (1976) states that “reading processes are initiated by
making guesses about the meaning of the text”.
The interactive approach suggested by Samuel and Kamil (1988) combine bottom-up and
top-down models interactively and constantly. In this model, the reader plays an active role
in employing different strategies which requires both the knowledge of the world and the
linguistic knowledge to interpret the meaning of the text.
The appearance and popularity of interactive model shows that this model can maximize
the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of the separate use of either bottom-up or topdown model. The interplay between bottom-up and top-down processing creates successful
reading.
1.3. Types of reading
Traditionally, the types of reading are divided into two parts: according to manner of
reading and purposes of reading.
The figure 1 will show the traditional types of reading


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language

Figure 1: The traditional types of reading
1.3.1. Manner of reading
According to Doff (1988), reading is divided into two main types: reading aloud and silent
reading in which “reading aloud involves looking at the text, understanding it and also
saying it”. This type is considered as a good way to convey necessary information to the
other but it is not common activity outside classroom. However, there is also other
researcher consider reading a loud as a way for students to make the connection between


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sounds and spelling of words and to assist teachers to check students’ pronunciation. Natal
(1996) says “reading aloud is an aid for beginners to improve their pronunciation”
According to Lewis (1985:110) says “silent reading is the method we normally use with
our native language, and on the whole the quickest and most efficient. Clearly, this type of
reading is more often use in real life and in classroom.
1.3.2. Purposes of reading
According to Greenwood (1985), Williams (1986) and Grellet (1990), reading is divided
into four types: skimming, scanning, extensive reading and intensive reading.
Nuttal (1982:36) also says “by skimming, we mean glancing rapidly through the text to
determine whether a researcher paper is relevant to our own work or in order to keep
ourselves superficially informed about matters that are not of great importance to us”. That
means when we use skimming, we read the text rapidly to find the main points.
Grellet (1981:19) states that “when scanning, we only try to locate specific information and
often we do not even follow the linearity of the passage to do so”. This type of reading use
to read the text rapidly to find a specific piece of information.
Unlike skimming and scanning, extensive and intensive reading are viewed differently.
While extensive reading is associated with long texts and is used to read for pleasure with

Scanning

Skimming

Cohesion

Figure 2: The general picture of advances in reading
1.4.1. Extensive reading
1.4.1.1. Extensive reading definitions
According to Hill (2006) “reading quantity with the purpose of learning the language and
of acquiring fluency for extensive reading”. He makes the difference between library
extensive reading based on the quantity of books that students read and class reading
related to the quality of the reading experience and with the ability that students can
interact with texts and over the content of the book with the teacher or by themselves.


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Richard Day and Bamford (2004) consider extensive reading as ten principles:

Principles

Descriptions
The text should be easy for students

1

Should not give many unknown words to students.
Teachers should present students with many kinds of reading



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same materials that students are reading and exchanging
opinions about them with students.

Table 1: Ten principles of extensive reading
“Although out-of-class reading is a school assignment, it can resemble real-world reading
if students choose what they want to read and respond to it in their own way, without being
tested on it. They are likely to be interested in and inspired by the opinions and reading
experiences of their peers but should be held individually accountable for what they read”.
Jack C. Richards (2003:3).


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1.4.1.2. Extensive reading versus Intensive reading
There are two kinds of reading, intensive reading and extensive reading. Both are
important though their importance finds expression in different ways.
Extensive reading will be selected at a lower level of difficult than that for intensive
reading. Where frequency word counts are available for the language being learned,
extensive reading will conform to a lower frequency word count than intensive reading.
Material will be selected whose choice of structure is less complex and whose vocabulary
range is less extensive. The aim of extensive reading is to train the students to read directly
and fluency in the target language for enjoyment without the aid of the teachers. Where
graded texts are available, structures in texts for extensive reading will be familiar, and
new items of vocabulary will be introduced slowly in such a way that their meaning can be
deduced from context. The students will be motivated to make intelligent guesses at the
meaning of unknown words. Material consists of short stories, plays or articles from
newspapers and magazines. A few adaptations of vocabulary and structure will be made.

that certain preconditions are met”. These include adequate exposure to the language,
interesting material, and a relaxed learning environment.
Elley and Manghubai (1983:55) says that exposure to the second language is normally
“planned, restricted, gradual, and largely artificial”.
Secondly, it can enhance learners’ general language competence.
Grabe (1991) and Paran (1996) have emphasized the importance of extensive reading in
providing learners with practice in automaticity of word recognition and decoding the
symbols on the printed page (often called bottom-up processing).
Thirdly, it increases the students’ exposure to the language.
The quality of exposure to language that learners receive is seen as important to their
potential to acquire new forms from the input. Elley views provision of large quantities of
reading material to children as fundamental to reducing the ‘exposure gap’ between L1
learners and L2 learners. He reviews a number of studies with children between six and
twelve years of age, in which subjects showed rapid growth in language development
compared with learners in regular language programs. There was a “spread of effect from
reading competence to other language skills - writing, speaking and control over syntax,”
(Elley, 1991:404).


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The forth is that it can increase knowledge of vocabulary.
Nagy & Herman (l987) claimed that children between grades three and twelve (US grade
levels) learn up to 3000 words a year. It is thought that only a small percentage of such
learning is due to direct vocabulary instruction, the remainder being due to acquisition of
words from reading. This suggests that traditional approaches to the teaching of
vocabulary, in which the number of new words taught in each class was carefully
controlled (words often being presented in related sets), is much less effective in promoting
vocabulary growth than simply getting students to spend time on silent reading of
interesting books.

practice in various reading skills and strategies. However, a large number of students in the
EFL world require reading for academic purposes, and therefore need training in study
skills and strategies for reading longer texts and books. Kembo (1993) points to the value
of extensive reading in developing students’ confidence and ability in facing these longer
texts.
The ninth, it encourages the exploitation of textual redundancy.
Insights from cognitive psychology have informed the understanding of the way the brain
functions in reading. It is now generally understood that slow, word-by-word reading,
which is common in classrooms, impedes comprehension by transferring an excess of
visual signals to the brain. This leads to overload because only a fraction of these signals
need to be processed for the reader to successfully interpret the message. Kalb (l986) refers
to redundancy as an important means of processing, and to extensive reading as the means
of recognizing and dealing with redundant elements in texts.
And the last using of extensive reading facilitates the development of prediction skills. One
of the currently accepted perspectives on the reading process is that it involves the
exploitation of background knowledge. Such knowledge is seen as providing a platform for
readers to predict the content of a text on the basis of a pre-existing schema. When students
read, these schemas are activated and help the reader to decode and interpret the message
beyond the printed words. These processes presuppose that readers predict, sample,
hypothesize and reorganize their understanding of the message as it unfolds while reading
(Nunan, 1991).
1.5. Previous research studies
Susser and Robb (1990) survey the literature on extensive reading and establish a working
definition of extensive reading as a language teaching/learning procedure. In this journal,


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they definite of “extensive reading” as a language teaching/learning procedure is that it is
reading of large quantities of material or long texts; for global or general understanding;



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Bell (1998) provides several role of extensive reading in language learning such as ER can
provide comprehensible input, enhance students’ general language competence, increase
the students’ exposure to the language, and increase knowledge of vocabulary. It can lead
to improvement in writing, motivate students to read, consolidate previously learned
language, help to build confidence with extended texts, encourage the exploitation of
textual redundancy, facilitates the development of prediction skills. And the researcher also
knows that with regard to the practical use at VTC, it can bring more effectiveness to the
students.
The researcher wants to show that it is possible to introduce and implement ER at VTC to
help students to feel more confident with their English abilities. And extensive reading will
promote a positive attitude toward reading and at least, their motivation for choosing an
English book for themselves.
In conclusion, this chapter focuses on the different useful aspects related to reading skills
as concepts of reading, the process of reading, types of reading support for this study. And
the most useful way, extensive reading is also given in this chapter with the hope to
improve students reading skills.


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CHAPTER 2:
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CURRENT SITUATION OF
TEACHING AND LEARNING READING
AT VIETTRONICS TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE (VTC).
2.1. Introduction
This chapter starts with an overview on VTC with background, facility and briefly trend of

Department at College of Foreign Languages, Viet Nam National University. They are all
young and maybe lack of experiences in teaching but they all have good qualification and
strong enthusiasm in teaching to upgrade their teaching quality.
For the first part (in the first and second term), the teachers are distributed into the same
levels with different classes. Each teacher has to be responsible for some classes with 75
periods for one for each term so that teachers often have 5 periods a week divided two days
of that week. Therefore, they have enough time to do well with four different skills.
Perhaps, the matter here is lacked experience in teaching. They often attach themselves to
the traditional teaching method, in which grammar and vocabulary always become the
focus of their attention every lesson. Teachers often ask students to read and scan the text
then find out new words and structures then they often write down new words and
structures on the board and explain for the meaning. They rarely require students to predict
or guess the meaning from the text. In addition students are asked to translate the text from
English into Vietnamese or complete the exercises provided in each lesson. They hardly
use extensive activities and tasks in their teaching reading. Therefore, there should be more
appropriate advances in teaching reading to improve students’ ability of reading.
2.4. Materials and Assessments.
At VTC, Students who are offered reading course in Lifelines book (Elementary by Tom
Hutchinson) for the first term and second term. It consists of 14 units, which are covered in
150 periods for two terms (45 minutes for each period). There are four skills in this book.
In each unit, the first section is grammar and grammar in use, next is vocabulary related to
the reading text so that it makes the reading text more exciting than others. In addition, this
book also provides reading passages of various topics such as: “people and jobs” (in unit
2), “family” (unit 3), “food and drinks” (unit 5)...etc... Mainly they are designed for the
aims of teaching reading so reading activities are set in each reading text (pre–reading
activities, while-reading activities, post-reading activities), and at the end of the reading
texts are exercises for ideas or information from the text. Therefore teachers will be


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their learning and their future career

1%
2%
40%

not important
not very important
important

57%

very important

As we see from this pie chart, 57% of the first year students confirm that reading English
reading play a very important role to their learning English and their future career, 40%
find reading English important, 2% say that it isn’t very important to study reading and
only 1% underrate the importance of reading English and his career in the future.
Obviously, these figures tell us how important of reading English for students, especially
for the first year students at VTC