Kết hợp sử dụng truyện ngắn và thơ nhằm phát triển kỹ năng đọc hiểu cho sinh viên năm 2 đại học hải

Chapter I: Introduction

I.1.Rationale

Nowadays, in this industrial world, a person who wants to be successful needs to have a

profound knowledge. Thus, much time is spent on learning to widen and deepen the

understanding about culture, science, technology as well as social skills. It is not easy if he

just stays at home and fills himself up with thousands of books as they are only theory, in

order to get practical experiences he has to communicate, in other words, he has to know

others and make himself known by others. This can be done only if he speaks the language

that they can understand. The solution is he has to learn English.

People learn English in different ways, they try their best to master the language skills

and as teachers, we try our best to help them attain their goals. Many teachers have spent

much time on finding the ways to improve listening skills while the others focus their research

on developing students’ speaking skills, etc. Being teachers of English we do want to take

part in the teaching method improvement process.

The fact in Hai Phong University is that the students have to cope with many difficulties

when learning the language especially reading. Most of them think that reading well means

they have to know every word in the text and do the exercises correctly, so they spend most of

the time looking up new words and doing exercises. However, it is proved that effective

reading means there is an interaction between the reader and the text. More specifically, the

students not only have to understand the text but also response to it, thus they can get to the

bottom of what they read. Fortunately, we had a chance to take part in a course called

“Literature in Language Teaching” delivered by Mr. Brad Baurain- an English teacher and

researcher. He helps us a lot to realize the values of using literary texts in language teaching.

After the course the superficial thoughts about literature disappeared and we know that

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literary texts are now considered the valuable authentic material, which plays a very important

part in students’ cultural enrichment, language enrichment as well as personal involvement.

The author, therefore, decides to carry out a study on the integration of literary text in

language teaching in order to improve students’ reading comprehension skills.

I.2.Aims

The focus of this study is on the specific use of literature in language teaching, it aims at:

• Studying the values of literature in language teaching.

• Integrating short stories and poems in teaching reading comprehension.

• Introducing techniques to integrate literary texts reading comprehension class.

I.3.Scope

Literature field is large, it covers different genres: novels; short/long stories; non fiction;

poetry and drama. In this minor study, we just focus on the use of short stories and narrative

poems in improving the reading comprehension skills. The short stories are of 3 to 5 page

long while the narrative poems are only of 1 to 2 pages long, they are at upper-intermediate

level with topic various according to students’ likes such as love, friendship, family etc.

I.4.Objects

Though literature has certain positive effects on the beginners as it helps students relax

while learning the language, however, due to its difficult language and style, literature will

work best with students from intermediate and upper-intermediate levels up. Thus, we choose

the second year students who are learning at English Department of Hai Phong University as

the subjects of this study.

I.5.Method.

The method applied in this study is quantitative method. All data is collected from

questionnaires. Two questionnaires are conducted of which one investigates the students’

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attitude toward different genres of literature while the other aims at collecting students’

feedbacks after learning literary text using certain techniques. The former is carried out at the

beginning of the study whose result is the base for the author to choose the types of literary

texts to teach in class whereas the later is conducted at the end of each lesson using short

stories and poems in reading class. The data collected then is analyzed and based on the

findings, techniques in teaching reading comprehension integrating short stories and poems

would be recommended.

I.6.Design of the study.

This study is divided into five chapters:

Chapter I: Introduction: briefly presents the reasons for doing the study, its aims,

scope, subjects as well as the research methodology.

Chapter II: Literature Review: presents an overview of what is literature, its values in

language teaching and how literature relates to reading.

Chapter III: Methodology: studies the reason for choosing research methodology and

the description of the setting, subject and instrument for collecting data.

Chapter IV: Data analysis and Results: provides data description and analysis with

findings.

Chapter V: Conclusion and Recommendation: suggests teaching techniques and

conclusion.

Chapter II: Literature Review

The emphasis of this chapter is mainly on exploring some of the issues relevant to the

use of literature in language teaching in general and introducing the advantages of short story

and poem in ESL classroom in particular. The links between literature and reading are also

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mentioned. However, as there are many different theories explain literature and the use of it in

classroom, the ideas generated in this chapter will not help to pinpoint an only right or correct

way to understand what literature is and its roles in improving language acquisition.

II.1. Literature

II.1.1. Definition

Defining literature is not an easy task; different people approach it in their own ways.

There are some definitions made by a group of teachers from all over the world. These

definitions are introduced by Lazar, 1993:

 Literature is ‘feelings’ and ‘thoughts’ in black and white.

 Literature is the use of language to evoke a personal response in the reader or

listener.

 Literature is the world of fantasy, horror, feelings, visions…put into words

 Literature means …to meet a lot of people, to know other different points of view,

ideas, thoughts, minds…to know ourselves better.

These definitions seem not scientific enough so the following is three of many

definitions defined scientifically by researchers:

“Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain

emotion”- Iris Murdoch, 1978.

“Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible

degree” – Ezra Pound, 1981.

“Literature is a special use of language which achieves its distinctness by deviating from

and distorting ‘practical language’”- Selden, 1989.

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