difficulties in teaching reading comprehension with the new english textbook “tieng anh 10” (the set



 

1. Rationale

Nowadays, English is an international language and has been widely used in many

countries in the world. In Vietnam, English is also considered the most important foreign

language and taught as a compulsory subject in most schools throughout the country. It has

also become an important need of the Vietnamese as a means of communication. As a result,

there have been a lot of changes in English teaching in order to meet the need. One of the

changes relates to new English language teaching syllabus and new textbooks, which have

arrived at high schools since 2006. The new textbooks change from a grammar and vocabulary

focus into a skill focus: listening, writing, speaking and reading. This, therefore, has

advantages as well as disadvantanges in teaching and learning English.

In the new English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” ,which refers to "English 10", reading is the

first skill presented in each unit. This proves the important role of reading. This is

understandable as generally speaking, reading provides students with the abilities to

understand the written materials. Reading has become not only an important means to gain

knowledge but also a means by which further study takes place.

This is the second year I have taught the new textbook “Tieng Anh 10” to the 10th form

students. I have met a lot of difficulties. The biggest challenges emerge from teaching reading

comprehension. My colleagues in my school have the same problems. We usually find it

difficult and hard to teach in reading lessons. Despite the teachers’ efforts, the students’

reading skills are disappointing. Most of the students do not understand the texts and do not

complete the reading tasks well. If those difficulties are not found out and no solutions to

overcome are given, it is certain that reading lessons cannot be successful and it even becomes

worse. This has a great effect on students’ learning result. On the other hands, students will be

fed up with learning English if they find it worthless to study this subject.

For all these reasons, it is necessary to find out difficulties in teaching reading

comprehension to the 10th form students at my school and the solutions. The author has been

encouraged to carry out the study on “difficulties in teaching reading comprehension with the

new English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks) to the 10th form students

at Ke Sat High School”. Once the difficulties are identified, some solutions to overcome them

will be suggested.

2. Aims of the study

The specific aims of the study are:

- to investigate the areas of difficulty that the teachers at Ke Sat High School are coping with

in their daily teaching reading comprehension to the 10th form students with the textbook

“Tieng Anh 10”.

- to suggest some solutions to overcome these difficulties .

The study is carried out with a hope that the findings from the study will be of some benefits

to the teachers at Ke Sat High School.

3. Scope of the study

This study is limited to:

- the 10th form students at Ke Sat High School

- the teachers of English at Ke Sat High School

- reading comprehension in the new English textbook “Tieng Anh10”.

4. Methods of the study

With the aim of finding out the difficulties in teaching reading comprehension with the new

English textbook "Tieng Anh 10" to 10 - form students at Ke Sat High School, this study

adopts quantitative and qualitative methods. To achieve the above aims, the study has been

carried out with the data collected from different instruments:

- interview questions for teachers of English at Ke Sat High School to investigate their

perceptions of reading difficulties.

- questionnaire for the 10th form students at Ke Sat High School to collect information about

their views of reading difficulties and causes of them.

Beside these instruments, classroom observation is used to record information from teachers.

5. Design of the study

The study is divided into three parts:

- The first part is the Introduction, which presents the retionale for the study, the aims,

methods, scope of the study as well as the design of the thesis.



- The second part is the Development of the study, divided into five chapters:

+ Chapter 1 is for Literature review, which provides the theoretical background.

+ Chapter 2 gives an overview of the new English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” and current

situation of teaching the textbook at Ke Sat High School.

+ Chapter 3 deals with the study: context of the study, research questions, the participants, the

data collection methods and data analysis.

+ Chapter 4 is for findings and discussion of findings.

+ Chapter 5 suggests some solutions to overcome difficulties.

- The last part is the Conclusion of the study, which summarises the study, states the

limitations of the study and recommendation for further research.



 

  

1.1. The nature of reading

1.1.1. Definition of reading and reading comprehension

Definition of reading

Goodman (1971: 135) considers 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”, and the act of reconstruction is viewed as “a cyclical process of

sampling, predicting, testing and confirming”.

According to Rumelhart (1977) “reading involves the reader, the text, and the interaction

between reader and text”. It means the roles of learners and reading text are placed an

important position in reading act.

Harmer (1989: 153) views reading from a different perspective. In his definition, “reading

is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain. The eyes receive the message and the brain

has to work out the significance of the message”. Smith (1985: 102) shares the same view on

reading when he defines “reading is understanding the author’s thought”. It means that the

readers “read the author’s mind not the author’s words”.

Attempts to define reading have been numerous. However, the act of reading is not

completely understood nor easily described. The definitions have been drawn from different

reading theories and models by various scholars. However, they all try to find out the nature of

reading and reading act, in which the readers, reading process and reading message are

emphasized.

Reading comprehension

Reading comprehension plays an important role in teaching and learning reading a foreign

language. It can be understood as the ability to obtain the information as required in the

reading text as efficiently as possible.

According to Swam (1975: 1). “a student is good at comprehension” if “he can read

accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information of a text”.