Efl students' difficulties in reading academic tasks = Những khó khăn của học sinh trong các loại bài tập đọc hiểu tiếng Anh

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

TRỊNH THỊ HUYÊN

EFL STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN READING

ACADEMIC TASKS

Field: Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching

Code: 8140111

SUPERVISOR: LÊ NHÂN THÀNH, PhD

BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO

TRƢỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN

TRỊNH THỊ HUYÊN

NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN CỦA HỌC SINH TRONG CÁC

LOẠI BÀI TẬP ĐỌC HIỂU TIẾNG ANH

Ngành: Lý luận và phƣơng pháp dạy học bộ môn Tiếng Anh

Mã số: 8140111

NGƢỜI HƢỚNG DẪN: TS. LÊ NHÂN THÀNH

i

STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP

The work contained in this thesis has not previously been submitted for

a degree or diploma in any university. I certify that, to the best of my

knowledge and belief, my thesis contains no material previously published or

written by any other person except where due reference is made in the thesis

itself.

Date:

Signed:

Trinh Thi Huyen

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper could not have been completed without the encouragement

and support from several individuals and groups to whom I would like to

express my deep sense of gratitude during the stressful time of writing this

paper.

First and foremost, I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Le Nhan

Thanh, for his support, patience, and encouragement throughout my study.

His technical and editorial advice was essential to the completion of this paper

and has taught me innumerable lessons and insights on the workings of

academic research in general. I have been extremely lucky to have a

supervisor who cared so much about my work.

My sincere thanks also go to the teachers at the Department of Foreign

Languages, Quy Nhon University for the useful knowledge that they taught

me during the time I attended the M.A course.

I would also like to thank the teachers and students at Ly Tu Trong

school for their untiring supports to this research paper. Without their

passionate participation and input, the study could not have been successfully

conducted.

Last but not least, I owe an unpaid debt to all the generous support,

love, and care from my beloved families and friends, which has given me

more strength, belief, and motivation to overcome all the troubles in the

whole process of this research.

Finally, I offer my regards and blessing to all of those who supported

me in the completion of the thesis.

iii

ABSTRACT

Reading comprehension is an important skill in learning English

because students with poor reading comprehension often face academic

challenges. In order to help students acquire good reading competence at

school, it is essential to find out what difficulties they face in reading

comprehension tasks. Therefore, this study aims to explore difficulties that

secondary school students encounter in their English reading comprehension

tasks by investigating their perceptions of the causes of the difficulties. The

study was conducted at Ly Tu Trong Secondary School, Gia Lai Province

with the participation of 90 students. The data for this study was collected

through questionnaires and 12 semi-structured interviews. Among eight

groups of factors, including both linguistic or non-linguistic factors, poor

grammar knowledge was perceived as the factor causing most difficulties for

the students in their reading comprehension tasks, followed by lack of content

knowledge, lack of vocabulary, lack of background knowledge, and lack of

reading strategies. In contrast, non-linguistic factors including psychological

factors, institutional factors, and physical factors were not perceived as the

causes for difficulties with reading comprehension tasks. The results from the

analysis of the interviews supported those from the questionnaires. They

affirmed that lack of vocabulary, grammar knowledge, background

knowledge, content knowledge, and reading strategies were the major causes

of difficulties for the students in doing reading comprehension tasks. Based

on the findings, implications for educators, school administrators, and EFL

teachers are addressed, and further studies are suggested.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP...............................................i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..............................................................................ii

ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS........................................................................... v

LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................vi

LIST OF FIGURES..........................................................................................vi

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION.................................................................. 1

1.1.BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY....................................................... 1

1.2.RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY.......................................................... 3

1.3.AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY ......................................... 4

1.3.1. Aim of the study ........................................................................... 4

1.3.2. Objectives of the study ................................................................. 5

1.4.RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................................................... 5

1.5.SCOPE OF THE STUDY....................................................................... 5

1.6.SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY ....................................................... 5

1.7.ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY..................................................... 6

CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW...................................................... 7

2.1.READING AND READING COMPREHENSION............................... 7

2.2.THE IMPORTANCE OF READING COMPREHENSION ............... 10

2.3.TYPES OF READING ......................................................................... 12

2.4.READING DIFFICULTIES AND FACTORS INFLUENCING

READING DIFFICULTIES ....................................................................... 16

2.4.1. Reading difficulties..................................................................... 16

2.4.2. Factors influencing reading difficulties...................................... 17

2.4.3. Previous studies .......................................................................... 30

2.4.4. Research gaps ............................................................................. 34

2.5.SUMMARY.......................................................................................... 34

v

CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY............................................................... 35

3.1.RESEARCH APPROACH ................................................................... 35

3.2.RESEARCH SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS................................. 36

3.3.DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS ............................................ 37

3.3.1. Questionnaires ............................................................................ 38

3.3.2. Interviews.................................................................................... 40

3.4.DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES .............................................. 41

3.4.1. Administering the questionnaires............................................... 41

3.4.2. Administering the interviews...................................................... 42

3.5.DATA ANALYSIS METHODS .......................................................... 43

3.6.RESEARCH RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY.................................. 44

3.7.LEGAL AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS.................................. 45

3.8.SUMMARY.......................................................................................... 45

CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS ....................................... 47

4.1.RESULTS FROM THE QUESTIONNAIRES..................................... 47

4.1.1. Difficulties caused by linguistic factors ..................................... 49

4.1.2. Difficulties caused by non-linguistic factors.............................. 51

4.2.RESULTS FROM THE INTERVIEW................................................. 57

4.3.DISCUSSIONS..................................................................................... 60

4.3.1. Discussion of difficulties caused by linguistic factors ............... 60

4.3.2. Discussion of difficulties caused by non-linguistic factors........ 62

4.4.SUMMARY.......................................................................................... 65

CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS........................... 67

5.1.SUMMARY OF MAIN FINDINGS .................................................... 67

5.2.RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS ............................................................ 68

5.2.1. Implications for students............................................................. 68

5.2.2. Implications for school administrators ....................................... 71

5.2.3. Implications for teachers............................................................. 71

vi

5.3.LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY........................................................ 72

5.4.RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES ........................ 73

REFERENCES.............................................................................................. 75

APPENDICES

v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

FL: Foreign language

L1: First Language

L2: Second Language

SPSS: Statistical Package for Social Sciences

vi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1. Background information of the participants.................................. 37

Table 3.2. Process of conducting the survey................................................... 39

Table 3.3. Mean Range for Agreement Degree .............................................. 44

Table 3.4. Reliability Statistics....................................................................... 45

Table 4.1. Students‟ perceptions towards causes of difficulties in reading

comprehension tasks ....................................................................................... 47

Table 4.2. A comparison between linguistic and non- linguistic factors........ 56

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 3.1. Quantitative data collection procedure......................................... 42

Figure 3.2. Qualitative data collection procedure........................................... 43

1

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

To establish the space for the topic and research questions for the study,

this chapter starts with an overview of reading comprehension and difficulties

of reading comprehension students face in the world and Vietnam context. It

then describes the rationale for the study, the research aims and objects, and

research questions. This is followed by the scope and the significance of the

study. Finally, there is an overview of the organization of the study.

1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Nowadays, together with growth of global connection, English has

recently been paid attention to as it is the language of era and science. The

most important skill among the four language skills lies on reading as it can

improve the overall language proficiency (Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998;

McDonough & Shaw, 2003; Krashen & Brown, 2007). More

comprehensively, reading plays a central role in our educational, working,

recreational and social lives. The ability to read is highly valued and

important for social and economic advancement. A student may have no

reading difficulty in his or her mother tongue. The problem exerts when

reading is applied to a second language, as students might be lagging behind

in a number of reading components, including accuracy, comprehension, and

speed. As Alsamadani (2008) mentioned, lagging behind is a cognitive

difficulty associated with the process of reading in another language. In other

words, these difficulties are more likely to be associated with the nature of the

language or even sociocultural aspects. All models of comprehension

recognize the need for readers to build up a mental representation of text, a

process that requires integration across a range of sources of information,

from lexical features to knowledge concerning events in the world (e.g.,

Garnham, 2001; Gernsbacher, 1990; Kintsch, 1998).