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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Research title
The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students at
Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS-VNUH
2. The statement of the research problem and theoretical background
and rationale for the proposed research
It is undeniable that reading plays a crucial role in daily life. “We can,
through reading, escape into the mind of a philosopher, observe with a
scientist, study with a scholar, analyze with a critic and live through a novel
or a play” (Trinh 1999, p.1). New knowledge, thanks to reading, is learnt and
valuable experience is shared. Addressing the popularity of reading, Dubin &
Olshtain (1981) emphasized:
“The modern world is filled with material for reading. Newspapers, magazines and books all come immediately to one’s mind. There are also the advertisements in newspapers and magazines, the labels on the products we buy and the signs everywhere […]” (p.31)
In learning a foreign language like English, reading is one indispensable
skill. Students in a second language classroom might be required to do
“intensive reading [which] means pupils understand everything they read and
to be able to answer detailed vocabulary and comprehension questions”
(Lewis & Hill, 1995,109) or extensive reading that would frequently begin
with reading for general information leading to the brief comprehension and
finally, detailed comprehension would be available after much practice
(Lewis & Hill, 1995, p.109) , with the aim of excelling academic studies or
personal development.
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
Extensive reading is usually practiced out of the class where the students are
motivated to read for different reasons and in different (Day and Bamford,
1997). In order to monitor self-practice of extensive reading out of the class,
the students are required to do reading reflections which were explained by
Wirth (2008) as follows:
“Reading reflections involve a range of higher order thinking skills. Students are asked to summarize the content of the reading (understand), they are asked to describe what is new or interesting (analyze, evaluate, create), and they are asked to identify those parts of the reading that are confusing (analyze, evaluate)”
It is very clear that one of this task’s goals is, according to Wirth, to help
students develop their reflective thinking, which means that the students are
expected to make use of their own assumptions and knowledge to evaluate the
new information’s quality based on answering three basic questions “(1) What
is the main point of the reading?, (2) What information did you find
surprising? Why? and (3) What did you find confusing? Why?” (Wirth,
2008).
Practically, there have been a few studies in Hanoi University of Languages
and International Studies researching the third year students’ reading
reflections such as Hoang (2007) and Nguyen (2007). However, there has not,
up to now, been any research investigating benefits, strategies and difficulties
towards doing reading reflections as perceived by third year students. The
researcher has, for all reasons above, decided to conduct a study to examine
the third year students’ perceptions of reading reflections in some aspects
stated above.
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
3. Research aims and research questions
Firstly, the study was conducted to find out what benefits the third year
students had achieved when implementing reading reflection tasks. Secondly,
their viewpoints on the strategies they had employed were expected to be
detected. Finally, a detailed investigation was carried out to specify the
difficulties third year students encountered during the process of carrying out
reading reflections. In brief, this study aimed to address three following
research questions:
1. What are the benefits of doing reading reflections as perceived by
the students?
2. What are the strategies used by the students in doing reading
reflections?
3. What are the difficulties encountered by the students in doing
reading reflections?
4. Scope of study
Despite the fact that the topic is about “[t]he exploitation of the reading
reflection task for third year students at Faculty of English Teacher Education,
ULIS, VNU”, the researcher only concentrated on a few aspects of doing
reading reflections namely “benefits”, “difficulties” and “strategies”.
The samples of the study are, due to the time limitation and the small scale of
research, restricted to 74 third year main stream students in Faculty of English
Language Teacher Education, ULIS-VNU.
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
5. Method of study
To address the three research questions presented above, a combined data
collection process using survey questionnaire and semi-structured interview
had been used.
Survey questionnaire which consisted of three main parts was employed to
collect information from 74 participants. They were asked to tick or circle the
number that best reflects their viewpoints on the five-point scale. Beside
closed-ended questions, open-ended ones were also exploited so that the
students could specify any additional comments on the situations given.
Next, semi-structured interviews were conducted among six students. They
were asked to specify their viewpoints expressed in the questionnaire. With
the aim of making the respondents most confident in the interview, the
language used was Vietnamese. It was noticeable that typical statements from
six interviews recorded with the respondents’ permission were made use in
the chapter 4: Discussion and Results.
More details about method of study would be founded in the chapter 3:
Methodology.
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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
First of all, this chapter will discuss reading in order to lay the foundation for later
reviews. Next, the aspects directly relating to the study’s contents such as extensive
reading together with intensive reading and reading reflection tasks will also be
reviewed.
2.1. Reading
2.1. 1. Definition of reading
Reading could be described by Williams (1986, p.2) as “a process whereby
one looks at and understands what has been written”. This definition of
reading does not mean that a language learner can understand everything in
the text. The reader usually combines new “information from the text and
[his/her] own background knowledge to build meaning” (Anderson, 2003,
p.67-68)
According to Hafner & Jolly (1982, p.4), reading is considered a process of
converting written language symbols into the direct or implied symbols which
could be understood by the reader. In broader sense, the reader and the writer
need have certain similar thoughts so that reading comprehension is to take
place. However, if the reader’s knowledge is far smaller than the writer’s, the
reader could be impossible to understand the factual information the writer
wants to transfer.
From the above mentioned opinions, a general conclusion could be drawn that
reading is actually a complex information processing skill in which the reader
interacts with the text in order to (re)create meaningful discourse.
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
2.1.2. The reader’s involvement in reading process
It was assumed by Nuttall (1996) that meaning was bridge between reader and
text and the transfer of a message from the writer to reader. To get meaning
from a text, each reader had his/her private ways. In the words of Nuttall
(1996, p.5), they were classified into 2 ways according to involvement of the
reader: passive and active one.
Figure 1 illustrates passive involvement of the reader
(Nuttall, 1996, 5)
The text contains a lot of meaning “like vase full of water, the reader’s mind
soaks it up like a sponge” (Nuttall, 1996, p.5). In this figure, the reader has a
passive role; “all the work has been done by the writer and the reader only has
to open his mind and the let the meaning pour in” (p.5) (without leaving
unnecessary meaning). The outstanding feature of this view of reading is that
the reader is an object who passively absorbed a load of unidentified
information
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
Unlike the passive reader, the active one must work to get the meaning out.
Moreover, he probably has a clear intention of reading and masters what he
expects to get from the text. However, the ways the positive readers approach
the text meaning are not similar. According to Nuttall (1996), the reader on
the left (figure 2) seems to have same thoughts as the writer, so he only has a
few obstacles in understanding the text thanks to few problems with the
language. On the other hand, to the reader on the right, the same text appears
very difficult. He could not be sure of the route to reach the meaning due to
problems of strange vocabulary, ignorance of facts and so on.
Figure 2 illustrates active involvement of the reader
(Nuttall, 1996, 11)
It was concluded that the meaning was not lying in the text waiting to be
passively absorbed. The reader actively had to extract the required
information from the text as efficiently as possible in the reading process. In
this study, active involvement of the reader into the reading process was
regarded as an assessment tool towards his/ her success in reading activities.
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
2.1.3. Reading strategies
Reading strategies can be broadly defined as “the mental operations
performed intentionally by a reader to achieve the goal of textual
comprehension” (Nishino, 2007, cited in Barnet, 1988). Successful L2 readers
as well as L1 readers have been found to use a number of different reading
strategies (Hosenfeld, 1977). To be more specific, Hosenfeld (1977) used
think-aloud, introspective, and retrospective protocols to investigate
American high school students’ use of strategies in reading foreign language
texts. The participants in his study were high school foreign language learners
and those who weren’t explicitly taught reading strategies. Hosenfeld
summarized the results of his two studies and presented a list of reading
strategies that successful L2 readers used, about half of which are directly
related to vocabulary. Hosenfeld’s learners:
“(a)skip words that are not important to understanding the whole text,
(b) identify the grammatical category of words,
(c) use orthographic information (e.g., capitalization) and recognize cognates,
(d) refer to side glosses but use the glossary only as a last resort,
(e) look up words correctly, and
(f) evaluate guesses”
(Hosenfeld, 1977, p.76)
The above emphasis on vocabulary is undeniable because larger vocabularies
are related to better text comprehension (Grabe & Stoller, 2002, p.12) and
guessing the meanings of unknown words using context clues facilitates
reading comprehension (Huckin & Bloch, 1993). In the words of Day and
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
Bamford (1998), reading was dependent on a variety of vocabulary and
background knowledge, and students obtained these via reading large
amounts of interesting and easy materials (p. 165).
2.2. Intensive reading and extensive reading
There are many ways of classifying reading; however, in the scope of the
study, the researcher would like to only discuss intensive reading and
extensive reading based on the purposes of reading.
2.2.1. Intensive reading
Hoang (2007) stated that intensive reading was a key activity in the classroom
in which the students were guided to read deeply short passages for the
purpose of understanding detailed information and developing reading skills
(such as scanning and skimming) and improving grammatical and lexical
knowledge (p.7)
Day and Bamford (1997) highly agreed with Hoang’s definition that intensive
reading was related to reading (or translating) carefully short foreign language
texts with the aim of complete and detailed understanding in terms of its
components (Day and Bamford, 1997, cited in Tran, 2009)
Thanks to shorter texts for reading intensively compared with extensive
reading, intensive reading has popularly been used among students in schools.
In fact, the resources for intensive reading are also huge, so the effects of
intensive reading are clearly not only for a short period of time.
However, intensive reading has also its disadvantages. One of the major
shortcomings of intensive reading is that the word-by-word translation would
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
hinder fluency (Carrell & Carson, 1997). This translation would prevent
readers from improving reading skills because they could have to stop when
encountering unknown words.
2.2.2. Extensive reading
2.2.2.1. Definition of extensive reading
Extensive reading means reading longer texts, usually for one’s own
pleasure. This is frequency activity, mainly involving global understanding
(Grellet, 1981, p.2). In other word, extensive reading could, according to
Levis and Hill (1992, 109), be defined as the reading in which students have
basic information of the text without understanding every detail.
Moreover, in accordance with Day and Bamford (1997), extensive reading
supplies students with the dynamics of reading when the students practice it
in reality. These researchers, in their forthcoming book Extensive Reading in
the Second Language Classroom showed ten characteristics discovered in
crucial programs for extensive reading:
“(1) Students read as much as possible, perhaps in and definitely out of the
classroom.
(2) A variety of materials on a wide range of topics is available so as to encourage
reading for different reasons and in different ways.
(3) Students select what they want to read and have the freedom to stop reading
material that fails to interest them.
(4) The purposes of reading are usually related to pleasure, information and general
understanding. These purposes are determined by the nature of the material and the
interests of the student.
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(5) Reading is its own reward. There are few or no follow-up exercises to be
completed after reading.
(6) Reading materials are well within the linguistic competence of the students in
terms of vocabulary and grammar. Dictionaries are rarely used while reading because
the constant stopping to look up words makes fluent reading difficult.
(7) Reading is individual and silent, at the student's own pace, and, outside class,
done when and where the student chooses.
(8) Reading speed is usually faster rather than slower as students read books and
other material that they find easily understandable.
(9) Teachers orient students to the goals of the program, explain the methodology,
keep track of what each student reads, and guide students in getting the most out of
the program.
(10) The teacher is a role model of a reader for students -- an active member of the
classroom reading community, demonstrating what it means to be a reader and the
rewards of being a reader.”
Differences between extensive reading and intensive reading are visualized as
follows:
Extensive reading Intensive reading
Development of faster reading Development of specific reading skills
Self-chosen materials; authentic reading Teacher-assigned texts with drills
Analytical reading Focused development of vocabulary, grammar, and study skills
Improved motivation for L2 reading Clearly-focused instruction of grammar
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
Greater entertainment & enjoyment (lower anxiety & better affective factors)
Positive effects of building up basic language skills in a short time
Wider range reading for pleasure Understanding author’s bias & purpose
(Yáng, 2007, 13)
2.2.2.2. Benefits of extensive reading
Whether extensive reading can help students to develop their reading
comprehension or not is still the focus for numerous doubts. According to
Krashen’s (1985) theory of Input Hypothesis for second language
acquisition, increasing the quantity of extensive reading input can improve
different language skills, such as reading comprehension and reading speed.
To make Krahen’s theory clearer, Robb & Susser (1989) described an
experiment comparing the improvement of reading comprehension by
Japanese college freshmen taught by either a skills-based or extensive reading
procedure. Results suggest that “extensive reading may be at least as effective
as skills building, with the important advantage that it is more interesting for
learners” (Robb, T. N., & Susser, B. 1989).
Beside effectiveness of extensive reading activity towards improvement in
reading comprehension and reading speed, gains in vocabulary are among the
most commonly cited benefits of practicing extensive reading (Nuttal 1982, in
Robb and Susser, 1989; Mason and Krashen, 1997). However, this aspect,
referring to Powell (2005), may have been somewhat exaggerated. According
to his theory, extensive reading probably involves reading easy texts requiring
little or no dictionary consultation. Therefore, it is perhaps contradictory to
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suggest that students can make huge vocabulary gains. In fact, Nation (1997)
and Waring (2001) all have agreed that students can only hope to make small,
incidental gains in vocabulary knowledge from extensive reading.
More remarkably, extensive reading contributes to the development of a whole
range of other language skills namely writing skills. Indeed, many researchers
have found extensive reading to have a positive effect on writing and other
areas of language competence (see Mason and Krashen, 1997; Day and
Bamford, interviewed by Donnes 1998). Robb and Susser (1989) were
surprised at the extent of writing gains made by one extensive reading group.
Nation (1997) similarly claimed benefits in general writing competence
(Nation, 1997), thanks to writing reflections about different aspects, including
ability to give comments and ability to organize writing. Mason and Krashen
(1997) have supported this view and concluded that “it is firmly established
that free extensive reading leads to increased writing competence” (Mason and
Krashen, in press)
2.2.2.3. Reading reflection task
In Carnegie Mellon University, USA, reading reflection task was carried out
before coming to class to support in-class information sharing activities.
“Two questions that occurred in each reading-reflection assignment asked
students (1) to state the main point of the reading in a sentence or two and (2)
to identify a strength and/or weakness in the work” (Lovett, 2009, para.3). He
also stated in class meetings, the students would share the information they
had from their reading reflection tasks with the other students and the lecturer.
Advantageously, the students who showed a misconception or difficulty
during class discussion would receive direct feedbacks from the
lecturer/instructor and their classmates. In the following class meeting, they
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
were encouraged to hand in their written responses based on supplementing
the missing information or re-adjusting the “misconception” towards the
content of their reading reflections.
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
3.1. Settings of the study
At 5th and 6th semester (2009-2010) at Faculty of English Language Teacher
Education-ULIS-VNUH, written communication skill including reading and
writing skills accounted for 3 credits out of each term’s total 22 ones. For the
reading program, reading reflection tasks were compulsory ones which had
specific requirements to be met in terms of reading material and reflection-
writing.
3.1.1. Reading material
In reading V course designed by English Skills Division III, ULIS-VNUH
(2009), students were required to choose readings from different sources
namely books, international magazines or the internet which had to be
authentic or real in preparation for input information for reading and
reflection-writing. More specifically, students could choose readings from the
lists of books and magazines suggested by English Skills Division III at the
end of Reading V program (appendix 3). From that list, the students could
borrow suitable books from Faculty of English Language Teaching
Education’s library. The other encouraged source for reading material came
from the internet which had been regarded as the huge and limitless one.
Another requirement for reading material was their length which varied from
at least 8,000 words to 12,000 words (including many mini-texts related to
one theme) recommended in the 5th and 6th semester respectively. These
figures ensured the students could read enough extensively to produce one
qualitative reflection as expected in the course.
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
3.1.2. Reflection-writing:
Reading reflection tasks were completed based on answering the questions
suggested in the guiding course and through critical analysis about texts or
reading materials did students learn new knowledge towards their awareness
and share the helpful information sources they had achieved with their
teachers and classmates. As we could see in the suggestions for reflection-
writing extracted from reading program semester V (appendix 3), students
were recommended to write reflection underlying three compulsory in-bold
questions:
a. What texts have you read these four weeks? List them all with their sources.
b. What did you learn from the reading passages(s)?
c. What was new knowledge and information that contradicted to what you had
known or assumed before reading the passages?
However, in the 6th semester, compulsory requirements for reflection-writing
were different. More detailed information about both reading list and review
wee not enough for a reading reflection without mentioning (Appendix 4)
Moreover, in Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS-VNU,
the tasks have been used as an assessment tool of effectiveness of the third
year students’ self reading at home as a result of credit-system training style
applied at HULIS since 2007. For this task, students had 2 periods weekly in
class reading and at least 7 hours or more actively reading at home (English
Skills Division III, 2009) and were required to hand in what they had read and
written reflections. The assessment for kinds of the tasks accounted for 15%
of the total mark of reading course.
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
3.2. Research design
3.2.1. Participants and participant selection method
The samples were restricted to 74 third year students at Faculty of English
Language Teacher Education, HULIS-VNU.
Since these students have been familiar with extensive reading and reflection
tasks in pervious semesters, they have had considerable experience in doing
that kind of assignment. In terms of language competence, according to
Hoang (2007), the third year students were in range between FCE and CAE
level (3rd and 4th grade out of 5 Cambridge framework of assessment’ levels)
(p.12). Thus, they could read various types of materials, from newspaper
articles, science books, short stories, magazines to novels in English
Specifically, three out of 22 classes of 3rd year students were invited to take
part in the questionnaire-answering process, which corresponds to 15% of the
total number of students. The selection process was taken according to cluster
sampling basis, which means that three classes were chosen by lots randomly.
After completing the questionnaire, 2 volunteers in each class were invited to
take part in the semi-structured interview with the aim of checking data
collected from the questionnaire and gaining further insights into the research
matters.
3.2.2. Data collection method
The combined data collection process using survey questionnaire and semi-
structured interview were exploited to address the three research questions.
To make it convenient to collect data and analyze, survey questionnaire was
divided into 3 parts in which each concerned one research question. Almost
the first two parts’ questions were rating closed-ended which required
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
participants to tick or circle the number from 1 “strongly disagree” to 5
“strongly agree” that reflected their viewpoints on the situation given. The
third part only involved an open-ended question in which the respondents
wrote the difficulties they had when doing reading reflections in the space
provided. Their obstacles were then sort out, categorized and generalized.
Afterwards, semi-structured interviews were conducted among six
interviewees who had participated in the questionnaire to collect deeper
information about their viewpoints expressed in the questionnaires. The
language used in the semi-structured interview was Vietnamese as so to make
the respondents confident and give valid information. It was noteworthy that
typical statements from six interviews recorded with the interviewees’
approval were employed to represent the discussions and results in the next
chapter.
3.2.3. Data collection procedures
The procedure of data selection consisted of three steps:
Step1:
The initial step was preparation for data collection consisting of designing
questionnaire and semi-structured interview. Moreover, pilot semi-structured
interviews and questionnaires were carried out with 10 voluntary respondents:
8 for questionnaire and 2 for semi-structured interview. Based on the result of
the experiment, the researcher considered and gave the final version of the
questionnaire and additional ideas for semi-structured interview.
Step 2:
About 70 questionnaire papers were delivered to three third-year- student
classes randomly chosen by lots after the researcher had contacted the
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
monitors of three classes and arranged the appropriate time. Furthermore, the
researcher was always willing to assist the participants by making any points
in the questions that might be misinterpreted become more comprehensive.
Afterwards, all the papers of questionnaire were collected carefully to ensure
the quantity of data.
Step 3:
After having collected questionnaire papers, semi-structured interviews were
conducted with six voluntary students who have previously taken part in
questionnaire data collection process.
3.2.4. Data analysis method
Descriptive statistics method, mean and standard deviation were employed to
analyze the data. Moreover, the information collected from the interview was
made use to compare and contrast with the data achieved from the
questionnaire which had been calculated and transferred into numerical form.
To be specific, the data collected from survey questionnaire had been
organized into three categories: the third year students’ attitudes and
perceptions towards benefits of reading reflections (the first research
question), the strategies in doing reading reflections tasks (the 2nd research
question) as well as the third year students’ difficulties towards carrying out
them (the final research question).
For the first two categories, mean and standard deviation were calculated to
show main outstanding trend from which the researcher deduced the most
popularly-obtained benefits as well as less popularly-obtained one among the
students when doing reading refection tasks and then strategically priority
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
choice the students made relating to reading source, where reading materials
were found and so on
For the last category, the descriptive statistics of frequency method was
employed to illustrate difficulties the students faced with.
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4. 1. Research question 1:
What are the benefits of doing reading reflections as perceived by third-year
students at Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS-VNU?
The results collected from 74 questionnaires towards the 1st research question
are transferred into the following table
Note for the following tables: M. stands for means
S.D. stands for standard deviation
4.1.1. Concerning the attitude towards doing reading reflections
Table 1: Attitude towards doing reading reflection
Before collecting the data, the researcher had predicted that most participants
would choose 4 “like” or 5 “highly like” when they rated item 1 “I enjoyed
doing reading reflections” because they spent a considerable great deal of
time working with reading reflections at the 5th semester (APPENDIX 3).
Pham Duc Long 07E10 Faculty of English Language Teacher Education ULIS, VNUHN
9, 12%
24, 33%
24, 32%
15, 20%2, 3%
highly dislike
dislike
neitheir like or dislike
like
highly like
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
However, the results from analyzing the data contrast with the researcher’s
prediction. Approximately 24, 33% participants chose option 2 “dislike”
while the agreement from 74 participants only occupied nearly 15, 2%. In the
words of those who did not agree, “reading reflections need too much time”,
or “In fact, I am keen on doing reading reflection; however, handing in so
many reading reflections last semester decreased my interest in kinds of the
tasks” (the interviewee 1). On the other hand, two participants expressed
highly positive attitude towards reading reflections. They specified their
comments in the space provided in the questionnaire paper that “doing
reading reflection is useful; almost my knowledge at university develops
through reading day by day and writing reflections
4.1.2. Concerning the opinion towards the benefits of doing reading reflections
3.24
3.52
3.963.88
3.05
3.64
2.76
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
1
reading speed
critical thinking
backgroundknowledge
vocabulary
general readingskills
ability to searchfor readingmaterials interest inreading/learning
Table 2: The response towards benefits
of doing reading reflections
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Based on the data in the table above, the researcher found out that means
corresponding to options 2.1 to 2.6 of item 2 “I think doing reading
reflections helped me improve (options 2.1 to 2.7)” are in the range between 3
“neither agree nor disagree” and 4 “agree”. Among them, the highest mean
for option 2.3 (3.96) illustrates that the participants achieved more
background knowledge compared with other benefits.
Next, although 42 participants agreed that their vocabulary improved so much
due to doing reading reflections but reality from the interview revealed that
“my vocabulary couldn’t be better coz I didn’t need to understand meanings
of new words while reading”(the interviewee 2). The interviewee 6 also
highlighted that “I usually read materials under time pressure. Therefore, I
ignored new words and only focused on main ideas in the texts”. For the
options “reading speed”, “critical thinking”, “general reading skills” and
“ability to search for reading materials”, means for the respondents’ choice
are 3.24; 3.52; 3.06 and 3.64 respectively. Based on these results, one finding
can be inferred that because of “being forced to do reading reflections” (the
interviewee 6), the third year students could upgrade many language skills at
5th semester. In addition, it is noticeable that in the perception of 16
respondents, doing reading reflections was impossible to help enhance their
“interest in reading/ learning”. Mean for option 2.7 (mean=2.76) are the
lowest one concerning the purposes of doing kinds of the tasks as perceived
by third year students at Faculty of English Language Teacher Education.
This result matches the findings withdrawn from item 1 “I enjoyed doing
reading reflection” in which 1/3 respondents expressed negative attitude
towards carrying out reading reflections presented at 4.1.1
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
4. 2. Research question 2:
What are the strategies used by third year students at Faculty of English
Language Teacher Education, ULIS-VNU in doing reading reflections?
4.2.1. Strategy-setting and plan-making
Table 3: Strategy-setting and plan-making
7%16%
46%
30%1%
strongly disagree
disagree
neither disagreenor disagreeagree
strongly agree
The outcomes from the item 3 “I set goals for my reflections and made plan to
achieve them” show that 46% participants were undecided whether they set
goals in term of marks or specific plans before doing reading reflections or
not whereas 16% those attending the study admitted that they had never made
plans to achieve any expectations. For example, the interviewee 3 stated “I
myself did not set any strategies. I used to begin doing this task when
submission deadline was 1 week left.” This might partially be explained by “I
was so busy during the previous semester”. Besides, 22 out of 74 participants
had their in-advance-set plans, accounting for roughly 30% those attended in
the research. One of them specified their additional comments about their
choice in the space supplied in the questionnaire that “[a]bout 3 or 4 weeks
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
before the week for submitting reading reflections, I usually planned to search
and 1 week left, I only concentrated on writing based on the texts searched.”
or “I always hoped to get more than 7 points for reading reflection tasks”. In a
word, it can be deduced that the third year students at Faculty of English
Language Teacher Education did not take more notice of setting private goals
before doing reading reflections which was explained by mean “M=3,03”
corresponding to neutral attitude “neither disagree nor agree”. Only 1/3 of
them might have ever thought of goal-setting and plan-making to fulfill their
tasks.
4.2.2. Reading sources
By analyzing data from the item 4 and 5 could the researcher deduce that the
third year students themselves tended to look for reading sources instead of
depending on other people, which were illustrated by 57 participants’
agreement including 39 for 4 “agree” and 18 for 5 “strongly agree”.
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
M S.D
4 I asked for reading sources from other people (teacher(s)/ friends) 3.38 0.92
5 I looked for reading sources on my own. 3.85 1.01
Mean for item 4 is 3.38 figuring out that the third year students not only based
on their experience but also relied on other people’s consultations. One
interviewee shared that her class were luck at 5th semester because her teacher
of reading skills gave her class a list of reliable websites and a category of
useful books towards reading reflection tasks. Thus, she could save much
more time from searching compared with the students at other classes.
4.2.3. Reading materials
Table 5: Reading materials
3.2
2.843.11
2.62.72.82.9
33.13.23.3
On the Internet. At the school’slibrary.
From myfriends’/my own
books andreferencs.
Materials found
Me
an
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It is apparent from the data of items 6, 7 and 8 calculated that mean for item 7
received the lowest one (M=2.84). The reasonable explanation could lie in “I
didn’t use to go to Faculty of English Language Teacher Education’ library to
find reading materials because of lack of authentic one and limitation of
service time”, stated by the interviewee 5. These findings are the same as ones
in Hoang (2007)’ study:
Mặc dù các sách đã được liệt kê thành danh mục có mã số thư viện phù hợp với
trình độ học sinh và được in kèm chương trình đọc ngay từ đầu năm, mức độ sử
dụng của sinh viên là rất thấp. Cụ thể chỉ có tổng số 23 sinh viên (16%) trong số
141 sinh viên được hỏi chọn mức 4, và 5. Mean của câu trả lời này là 2.41, trong
đó có 85 sinh viên (60%) chọn mức 1 và 2 tức là không hoặc hầu như không sử
dụng. Các cuộc phỏng vấn tiếp đó cho thấy các em phàn nàn về chất lượng phục vụ
của thủ thư, và thời gian thư viện mở cửa trùng với thời gian học chính khoá trên
lớp dẫn đến việc tiếp cận thư viện không thuận lợi. (p. 23-24)
Furthermore, it might have been the popularity of internet and its reasonable
service cost leading to the third year students’ effective exploitation of the
internet towards doing reading reflection tasks last semester because ½
attendants in the questionnaire-used data collection process confirmed that
they used the internet during at-home-self-reading-time to fulfill these tasks
(27 for 4 “agree” and 5 for “strongly agree”). However, one of 15 those who
did not approve of the internet’s benefits towards looking for reading
materials presented his viewpoint that he experienced about two hours
everyday sitting in front of his computer, trying to find relevant texts;
however, almost the time he was hopeless because reading materials in the
internet were too short to have 8.000 words as required in the course guide for
reading reflections. Another student at the same group pointed out “you
should choose English novels if you want enough number of words”.
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Otherwise, “take a look at the reference at the bottom of course guide for
reading. It will help you much instead of wasting your valuable time on
finding in the internet”.
4.2.4. Reading and writing the reflections
For reading and writing reflections, mean for option 9.2 received the highest
one (M=3.99), followed by option 9.1 (M= 3.61). Next came option 9.3; 9.5;
9.4 and 9.7 with the average number that best reflects their choice: 3.45; 3.43;
3.31 and 3.18 respectively. These figures above demonstrate the 3 rd year
students’ strategic differences in “reading different types of reading
materials”, “summarizing the main contents of the materials” and “discussing
the purposes, the target readers, organization, the styles and the reliability of
the reading passages”. Clearly, summarizing the main contents of the reading
Pham Duc Long 07E10 Faculty of English Language Teacher Education ULIS, VNUHN
Table 5: Reading and writing the reflections
3.613.99
3.45 3.31 3.433.18 3.31
0
1
2
3
4
5
1Strategies
Mea
n
I read different types of reading materials.
I summarized the main contents of the materials.
I discussed the purposes of the reading passages.
I discussed the target readers of the reading passages.
I discussed the organization of the passages.
I discussed the style of the passages.
I discussed the reliability of the sources.
28
The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
passages was concentrated by more respondents. Surprisingly, only 1
participant in the questionnaire shared that he forgot to or did not summarize
the main contents of the materials when doing reading reflections.
In addition, for the item 9.5 “I discussed the organization of the passages”,
40, 5% participants, who expressed their neutral viewpoint “neither agree nor
disagree” by choosing the number 3, was matched by ones circling the
number 4 “agree”. It means that nearly ½ the 3 rd year student used reading
skills (skimming) to look for the organization of the passages when reading
passages. However, the results from the interview were contradictory. Four of
six interviewees stated that “only when I had to summarize the main contents
of the passages did I discuss the structure of the passages”. In the meanwhile,
the rests insisted on that “having a brief overview of the passages’ structures
will help me read quickly and effectively”.
It is not enough without discussing item 9.7 “I discussed the reliability of
the sources” which received the considerably special attraction from the
respondents. A large scale of participants specified their answers by adding
some comments in the space provided below part 2 (the questionnaire).
Among them are those who used to choose the books written by big names or
from famous publishing houses to get reliable information for their reading
reflection tasks while others chose reading texts in popular website addresses
such as “New York Times or The Times, etc” (the interview 1). Moreover,
this item got the highest S.D (standard deviation) which means that
differences between the respondents’ choices from “strongly disagree” to
“strongly agree” towards the item 9.7 were in marked fluctuation.
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4.2.5. Reflection-reviewing
1 2 3 4 5 M S.D
10 I discussed and reviewed my refection with
my friends/my teachers.
6 24 27 15 2 2.72 0.99
It can be inferred from the table above that the majority of 3 rd year students
did not have intentions of getting feedbacks from their friends or teachers
before handing in reading reflections. Obviously, the number of via-
questionnaire-informants who got used to having debates as well as
considering their reflections carefully after they were completed was at small
scale: 17 (6 for “strongly disagree” and 24 for “disagree”) out of 74, much
fewer compared with 30 participants who didn’t. Furthermore, mean for this
item “I discussed and reviewed my refection with my friends/my teachers” (M
Item 10 =2. 72) lying below the average point “3” of five-point scale also
highlighted that these students hardly had any special strategies from getting
their reflection tasks commented before sending to the teachers.
4.2.6. Later reflections
1 2 3 4 5 M S.D
11 I received comments for my reflections from
my teacher.
1 9 15 32 17 3.74 0.99
12 I improved my later reflections. 4 4 29 29 8 3.45 0.95
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
It is undeniable that mean for item 11 which is approximately 4 “agree” in the
five-point scale (M=3.74) represents that almost the participants got
comments for their reflections from their teacher. However, the results from
the semi-structured interview revealed that “I didn’t receive any feedbacks for
my first reading reflection last semester”, shared one interviewee, “however,
the teacher gave us general comments synthesized from in-class members’
reflection tasks”. Differently, two interviewees stated that they received the
direct comments from their lecturer of reading skills every week at 5 th
semester when they were required to give presentation on what they read and
wrote reflections in class meetings. Another remarkable point needs to be
stated here is ½ respondents applied the comments from the teachers into later
reflections. Therefore, it can be inferred that improvement in the 3 rd students’
following reflections could be dated back to the teachers’ comments for the
former ones.
4. 3. Research question 3:
What are the difficulties encountered by third year students at Faculty of
English Language Teacher Education, ULIS-VNU in doing reading
reflections?
To address the research question 3, the researcher expected the participants to
write their difficulties they had when doing reading reflections in the space
provided in the questionnaire paper. 30 participants specified their troubles
including objective troubles (with requirements of tasks such as sources,
length and number of reflections as well as lack of the teacher’ feedbacks),
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
subjective troubles (with searching and writing) and no trouble at all while the
rest didn’t write anything.
Summary of difficulties as perceived by 30 participants towards doing
reading reflection have been classified as follows:
Source -Problems in looking for academic sources
-Problems in finding reliable sources on the internet.
-Problems in meeting requirement of sources having
authentic texts
Number of
reflections
-Too many reading reflections
Length -I would like it shorter and do reflection based on my
thinking
-The number of words required is too much. I would like it
shorter
-We were required to reflect 8.000-word texts (within 4
passages) in the previous semester that means looking for
every 2000-word passage was rather difficult (just texts
about science maybe meet requirement of 2000 words
long)
-It is too difficult to find sources about 1 topic in about 200
words, it also is hard to summarize the content
-Sometimes difficulties in summary because the para. is too
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
long to understand.
-The number of words is too large. I find it difficult to
summarize the passages.
Teacher -Teachers rarely give comments on reflections, only ask
students to read and hand in it.
-My teacher didn’t send the reflection’s comments back to
me, so I couldn’t get any experiences.
Searching -Difficulties in searching reading materials on the internet
-I did not narrow the topic when searching
-Lack of searching skills, too many new words and the
passages required are too long to read.
-I am not good at finding any authentic sources with
interesting passages, the enormous information in the
Internet makes me confused
Writing -I had to write too much even though the main purposes of
tasks were to focus on reading.
-I had some problems with plagiarism, commenting and
organizing the structure of my reflection.
No difficulties -I don’t find any difficulties in searching and selecting
materials. However, I don’t really like writing reading
reflection, since it doesn’t reflect my true reading skills.
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CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION
5.1. Major findings of the study
Basically, the study has found expected answers to three research questions
stated in the chapter 1 (Introduction), addressing three aspects of reading
reflection tasks in term of benefits, strategies and difficulties in perceptions of
third year students.
As respond to the 1st research question relating to benefits of reading reflection
tasks, the analysis and discussion of data collected from questionnaires and
interviews revealed that about ½ participants were not keen on doing reading
reflections. Moreover, it is noticeable that background knowledge and increase
in vocabulary ranges in L2 were the benefits achieved most considerably by the
third year students comparing with other ones.
As regards the strategies of doing the tasks used by third year students, the
researcher collected 4 main findings. Firstly, these figures could demonstrate
that a considerable number of third year students at Faculty of English
Language Teacher Education did not get used to setting personal goals for their
study which was partially accounted for by overload of different subjects’
homework in perceptions of the interviewees. Secondly, although Faculty of
English Language Teacher Education has owned a well-equipped library, the
third year students tended to search reading passages in the internet (due to the
internet’s benefits and its reasonable service cost) instead of searching in the
library. Furthermore, while reading and writing reflections, the large scale of
participants confirmed that they frequently read different types of reading
materials as well as discussed the purposes, the target readers, the organization,
the styles and the reliability of reading passages and summarized the contents
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of reading materials. These activities expressed that they began to read
extensively and analyzed information intensively. Fourthly, after completing
their reading reflections tasks, the third year students rarely had a discussion
with other people or checked it carefully. However, they always expected to
give feedbacks from the lecturers after reading reflections had been marked and
improved their later reflections.
5.2. Pedagogical implications from the findings
The study is believed to have made some significant implications towards the
third year students and the lecturers at English Skills Division III. To be
specific, as analyzed in chapter 4, the students’ difficulties in doing reading
reflections came from objective and subjective reasons. Therefore, in term of
length of reading materials (objective reason), the number of reading passages’
words required should be decreased. 8.000-word texts were proven too difficult
to look for. Moreover, it could be demanded that the teachers of reading skills
would give the reflection’s comments back to the students so that the students
would get more experiences and improve later reflections. In subjective
viewpoint, the students are advised to make plan as specifically as possible
before doing reading reflection tasks as well as spend more time revising what
they had finished.
5.3. Limitation of the study
Although the researcher took considerably great efforts to conduct the study,
there are still some limitations due to time pressure and small scale of samples.
In the first place, the number of third year students directly involving in the
study (74) remained relatively low compared with the enormous number of 3 rd
students in Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS,
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
VNU(nearly 450). For this reason, the answers of these participants in some
extents could be unlikely to represent the total purposes, strategies and
difficulties roughly 450 third year student had when doing reading reflections
In the second place, the limited number of interviewees was another
shortcoming of the paper. Due to time constraint, the study only concentrated
on getting in-depth information from 6 volunteers who had been taken part in
the questionnaire before. Therefore, the interviews’ results did not really satisfy
the desirable data the researchers had intention to collect. To fill in gap in some
extents, a large number of interviewees should be invited to participate in the
study.
Despite the shortcomings presented above, the researcher strongly assures that
collected results are valid and reliable thanks to the researcher’s carefulness and
responsibility in collecting and analyzing data as well as effective exploitation
of questionnaire and interview instruments.
5.4. Suggestions for further studies
Practically, the study placed its focus on third year students’ perception towards
a few aspects of doing reading reflection tasks illustrated by terms “purposes”,
“strategies” and “difficulties”. Therefore, for the future studies on the same
topic, many different unexploited aspects relating to the students’ and the
teachers’ perception should be conducted. For example, further papers can be
carried out to investigate the assessment of reading reflection tasks perceived
by the teachers or the purposes of the teacher when teaching reading
reflections.
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Another remarkable point needs to be stated here is that it would be better if
future studies could be completed with broader informant population to
increase the generalization of the findings.
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APPENDIX 1
SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE
I am Phạm Đức Long, a third year student at Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS- VNUH. In support of Ms Nguyễn Thanh Hà, I am conducting a research on third year students’ exploitation of reading reflections tasks. I would like to ask for your help in filling in this questionnaire which serves as a major source of data for my study. There is no “right” or “wrong” answer and your name would not be asked and you would not be identified in any discussion of the data. Please answer the questions honestly as it will help guarantee the success of this study.
Thank you very much!
Background information You are: □ Male □ FemaleYour major is: □ Teacher training □ Interpreter training You have been learning English for……………………years (Please specify)Your scores of reading reflection assignments last semester were …………………….Your final score for reading skill last semester was ……………………. (Please list the scores)
For the following questions that require rating, please tick or circle the number that best reflects your viewpoint or situation on a five-point scale.
1 2 3 4 5Strongly disagree
Disagree Neither agree nor disagree
Agree Strongly agree
Part 1: Concerning your attitude and opinion toward doing reading reflections
1 I enjoyed doing reading reflections. 1 2 3 4 5
2 I think doing reading reflections helped me improve
2.1 o my reading speed 1 2 3 4 5
2.2 o my critical thinking 1 2 3 4 5
2.3 o my background knowledge 1 2 3 4 5
2.4 o my vocabulary 1 2 3 4 5
2.5 o my general reading skills 1 2 3 4 5
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2.6 o my ability to search for reading materials 1 2 3 4 5
2.7 o my interest in reading/learning 1 2 3 4 5
Please specify any additional comments you have: ………………………………………....
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Part 2: Concerning your strategies in doing reading reflections
3 I set goals for my reflections and made plan to achieve them 1 2 3 4 5
4 I asked for reading sources from other people (teacher(s)/ friends) 1 2 3 4 5
5 I looked for reading sources on my own. 1 2 3 4 5
6 I found reading materials for my reflection on the Internet. 1 2 3 4 5
7 I found reading materials for my reflection at the school’s library. 1 2 3 4 5
8 I found reading materials for my reflection from my friends’/my own
books and references.
1 2 3 4 5
9 For my reading reflections, …
9.1 o I read different types of reading materials. 1 2 3 4 5
9.2 o I summarized the main contents of the materials. 1 2 3 4 5
9.3 o I discussed the purposes of the reading passages. 1 2 3 4 5
9.4 o I discussed the target readers of the reading passages. 1 2 3 4 5
9.5 o I discussed the organization of the passages. 1 2 3 4 5
9.6 o I discussed the style of the passages. 1 2 3 4 5
9.7 o I discussed the reliability of the sources. 1 2 3 4 5
10 I discussed and reviewed my reflections with my friends/my teacher 1 2 3 4 5
11 I received comments for my reflections from my teacher. 1 2 3 4 5
12 I improved my later reflections. 1 2 3 4 5
Others (please specify) …………………………………………….. 1 2 3 4 5
Please specify any additional comments you have: ………………………………………....
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Part 3: Concerning the difficulties you had when doing reading reflections (in searching
and selecting materials and in reading and writing the reflections, etc.)
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Please write in the space provided below:
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
APPENDIX 2
QUESTIONNAIRE RESULT STATISTICS
Note: M. stands for mean S.D. stands for standard deviation
1 2 3 4 5Strongly disagree
Disagree Neither agree nor
disagreeAgree
Strongly agree
4.1. Concerning the attitude and opinion of benefits of doing reading reflections
1 2 3 4 5 M S.D
1 I enjoyed doing reading reflections. 9 24 24 15 2 2.69 1.01
2 I think doing reading reflections helped me
improve2.1 o my reading speed 8 10 21 26 9 3.24 1.16
2.2 o my critical thinking 5 4 20 37 8 3.52 0.99
2.3 o my background knowledge 2 2 10 43 17 3.96 0.85
2.4 o my vocabulary 2 1 15 42 14 3.88 0.82
2.5 o my general reading skills 4 11 28 28 3 3.05 1.16
2.6 o my ability to search for reading
materials
0 6 25 33 10 3.64 0.81
2.7 o my interest in reading/learning 7 16 24 21 6 2.76 0.93
4.2. Concerning the strategies towards doing reading reflections
4.2.1. Strategy-setting and plan-making
1 2 3 4 5 M S.D
3 I set goals for my reflections and made plan to
achieve them
5 12 34 22 1 3.03 0.88
4.2.2. Reading sources
1 2 3 4 5 M S.D
4 I asked for reading sources from other people
(teacher(s)/ friends)
1 15 21 32 5 3.38 0.92
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5 I looked for reading sources on my own. 3 6 8 39 18 3.85 1.01
4.2.3. Reading materials
1 2 3 4 5 M S.D
6 I found reading materials for my reflection on
the Internet.
7 8 27 27 5 3,20 1.04
7 I found reading materials for my reflection at
the school’s library.
10 21 19 19 5 2.84 1.15
8 I found reading materials for my reflection
from my friends’/my own books and
references.
5 20 14 32 3 3.11 1.06
4.2.4. Reading and writing the reflections
9 For my reading reflections, … 1 2 3 4 5 M S.D9.1 o I read different types of reading
materials.
1 4 27 33 9 3.61 0.82
9.2 o I summarized the main contents of the
materials.
1 0 12 47 14 3.99 0.69
9.3 o I discussed the purposes of the reading
passages.
3 9 20 36 6 3.45 0.95
9.4 o I discussed the target readers of the
reading passages.
2 12 25 31 4 3.31 0.90
9.5 o I discussed the organization of the
passages.
1 7 30 31 5 3.43 0.81
9.6 o I discussed the style of the passages. 1 14 33 23 3 3.18 0.83
9.7 o I discussed the reliability of the sources. 3 10 29 25 7 3.31 0.96
4.2.5. Reflection-reviewing
1 2 3 4 5 M S.D
10 I discussed and reviewed my refection with
my friends/my teachers.
6 24 27 15 2 2.72 0.99
4.2.6. Later reflections
1 2 3 4 5 M S.D
11 I received comments for my reflections from
my teacher.
1 9 15 32 17 3.74 0.99
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
12 I improved my later reflections. 4 4 29 29 8 3.45 0.95
APPENDIX 3
PLAN FOR THE SEMI-INSTRUCTED INTERVIEW
A. List of important topics to cover
+ The purposes of reading reflections
+ The strategies in writing reflections for extensive reading
+ The difficulties in writing reflections for extensive reading
B. Brief explanation of the interviewer’s purpose
In support of Ms Nguyễn Thanh Hà, I am conducting a research on a few aspects of
writing reflections of extensive reading explained by the terms “purposes” as well as
“strategies” and “difficulties” as perceived by the third year students in Faculty of English
Language Teacher Education, HULIS-VNU. I would like to ask for your help which serves
as the major sources of data or my study.
C. A few specific questions used in the interview
1. Did you enjoy doing reading reflections in the semester 5? Why?
2. Which aspects do you think doing reading reflection made you progressive?
3. In order to complete reading reflections, what did you usually have strategies?
About setting goals before doing?
Sources (yourself/ teachers/ friends)
Narrow topic before searching or not?
Where to find reading materials?
Discuss and review reading materials?
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For your reading reflection, what did you do? (summary, purposes, the
target readers, organizations of the passages and reliability of sources)
4. What difficulties you encountered?
Note: The interview would be flexible when asking
APPENDIX 4
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION
ENGLISH SKILLS DIVISION III
READING PROGRAM SEMESTER V
1. COURSE INTRODUCTION
Institution : Vietnam National University, Hanoi - University of Languages and International Studies
Department : Faculty of English Language Teacher Education
Division : English Skills III
Course credit value : Covering 55% of Written Communication 5- 3 Credits
Semester : 5
2. COURSE OBJECTIVES
1. To improve academic reading skills, including
understanding vocabulary in context,
getting reading for gist, scanning for details,
locating reference, understanding inference,
understanding the author’s perspectives,
understanding text structure and organization.
2. To improve critical reading and thinking skills.
3. To enrich background knowledge.
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4. To develop the skills and ability to search for reading materials through libraries, bookstores and the Internet to enrich their reading resources.
5. To consolidate and broaden language knowledge to reach CAE level.
3. CORE READING
Ediger,A. ,& Pavlik, C. (1999). Reading connections: skills and strategies for purposeful reading: High intermediate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4. ASSESSMENT PLAN
Reading assessment for the third-year students is carried out with four forms: student’s participation, 4 mini-tests, reading reflection and final exam.
Reading score (55%) = Participationx5% +mini-test x 10% +reflection x15%+final x 25%
4.1 Class participation (5%)
Each student is required to
actively prepare for the class
actively participate in class activities
work cooperatively and collaboratively with other peers
The participation score will be based on students’ fulfillment of homework and their contribution to class activities.
4.2 Mini-tests (10%)
Students will complete 3 mini-tests through out the semester. The format, content and time of the test are to be decided by the teacher.
4.3 Reading reflection (15%)
The purpose of the reflection is for the teacher to monitor students’ self-study. Each week students spend 2 periods in class reading and at least 7 hours or more self-reading at home
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
Students should read extra materials related to the topic of the main reading passage and
write a short reflection answering the following guiding questions? (Questions in bold are
compulsory)
a. What texts have you read these four weeks? List them all with their sources.
b. What did you learn from the reading passages(s)?
c. What was new knowledge and information that contradicted to what you had
known or assumed before reading the passages?
d. What reading skills did you practice when reading those passages?
e. Did you find any new sources of reading materials that you can share with your
classmates? List them.
f. Have you got any questions you would like to ask your friends or your teachers?
What are they?
Requirements:
1. For reading material
Materials (articles, a chapter from a book,) are from reliable sources about one
certain theme. Students are recommended to find the authentic material from
books and international magazines or the internet. The resources of the material
need to be clearly shown in Reference.
Length is 8000 words for reading for minimum to read in 4 weeks
2. For the reflection writing
Format: typed, font: Times New Roman, size 12, line spacing: 1.5 line
Length: 500 words as the minimum for the writing to analyse these articles read in 4 weeks.
Submission deadline: The reflection is due every four weeks and must be submitted at the beginning of the reading lesson of the week 5, 10, 13 (refer to the Class Schedule on the next page)
Late assignments will not be accepted, unless students have arranged with their teacher prior to the regular due date to turn in the assignment
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Assessment: The assessment will be on the range of reading, critical understanding and reflection of the materials.
4.5 Final Exams (25%)
The format and the task types of the final reading exam are selected from those of the Cambridge First Certificate in English Tests and CAE Tests.
APPENDIX 5
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION
ENGLISH SKILLS DIVISION III
READING PROGRAM SEMESTER VI
1. COURSE INTRODUCTION
Institution : Vietnam National University, Hanoi - University of Languages and International Studies
Department : Faculty of English Language Teacher Education
Division : English Skills III
Course credit value : 2
Semester : 6
2. COURSE OBJECTIVES
1. To improve academic reading skills, including
understanding vocabulary in context,
getting reading for gist, scanning for details,
locating reference, understanding inference,
understanding the author’s perspectives,
Understanding text structure and organization.
2. To improve critical reading and thinking skills.
3. To enrich background knowledge.
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The exploitation of the reading reflection task for third year students, ULIS, VNU
4. To develop the skills and ability to search for reading materials through libraries, bookstores and the Internet to enrich their reading resources.
5. To consolidate and broaden language knowledge to reach CAE level.
3. CORE READING
Greenall, S. & Pye, D. (1999). CAE Reading Skills. Cambridge University Press.
4. ASSESSMENT PLANReading assessment for the third-year students is carried out with four forms: student’s participation, 4 mini-tests, reading reflection and final exam.
Final reading score (55%) = Participation score x 5% + mini-test score x 10% + reading reflection x 15% + final test score x 25%
4.1 Class participation (5%)Each student is required to
actively prepare for the class actively participate in class activities work cooperatively and collaboratively with other peers
The participation score will be based on students’ fulfillment of homework and their contribution to class activities.
4.2 Mini-tests (10%)Students will complete 4 mini-tests through out the semester. Each test’s score accounts for 2.5 % of the final grade. The format, content and time of the test are to be decided by the teacher.
4.3 Reading reflection (15%)The main purpose of the reflections is for the students to read extensively and improve their background knowledge as well as their ability to analyze and evaluate reading texts
Each week students spend 2 periods in class reading and at least 7 hours or more self reading at home. For every five weeks, they should read at least 12,000 words and submit a reflection consisting of the following elements:
a. Reading list, which provides the following kinds of information about each passage:
a. The titleb. The author(s)c. The sourced. The number of words
b. Review, which answers the following questions:a. What are the purposes of the reading passage(s)?b. Who are the target readers?
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c. What is the pattern of organization?d. What are the main ideas?e. What is the style of the passage(s)? Is this appropriate to the target readers
and the purposes?f. How do you evaluate these texts?
Requirements:a. Students do NOT have to submit the readipassages, but the sources provided should
be specific enough for the teacher to refer to when necessary.b. Format: typed, font: Times New Roman, size 12, line spacing: 1.5 linec. Length: 400-500 wordsd. Submission deadline: The reflection is due every five weeks and must be
submitted at the beginning of the reading lesson of the week assigned. (refer to the Class Schedule on the next page)
e. Late assignments will not be accepted, unless students have arranged with their teacher prior to the regular due date to turn in the assignment
Assessment: The assessment will be on the range of reading, critical understanding and reflection of the materials.
4.5 Final Exams (25%)The format and the task types of the final reading exam are selected from those of the Cambridge First Certificate in English Tests and CAE Tests.
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5. CLASS SCHEDULE
Week Content Reading skills practiced
1 Introduction. Getting started and pretest
Unit 1: Foundation unit
2 Unit 2: Survival - skimming a text for main ideas
- identifying the aim of a text
3 Unit 3: Consumer issues - previewing a text
- dealing with difficult vocabulary
4 Self-study and consultation
Unit 4: Transport
- previewing a text
- skimming a text for main ideas
- looking for clues to text structure
5 Unit 5: Travel
Submission of Reflection 1
- scanning a text for specific information
- identifying relevant information to perform a task
6 Unit 6: Large-scale art - forming an overall impression of a text and identifying the text type
- identifying clues to text structure
7 Unit 7: Children and education
- previewing a text
- identifying and interpreting opinions
- inferring information which is not clearly stated
8 Self-study and consultation
Unit 8: The oceans
- identifying text type and the purpose of a text
- evaluating a text and the writer’s style
9 Unit 9: Memorable incidents
Submission of Reflection 2
- identifying the text type
- interpreting the purpose of sentences in a text
- identifying clues to text structure
10 Unit 10: Cultural issues - scanning for specific information
- inferring a writer’s opinions
- evaluating the text
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11 Unit 11: The living world - understanding the main idea of a text
- understanding the writer’s attitude and tone of the text
- inferring meaning from context
12 Self-study and consultation
Unit 12: Communications
- identifying the purpose of a paragraph
- inferring the writer’s intentions and attitude
- dealing with difficult vocabulary
13 Unit 13: Science fiction?
Submission of Reflection 3
- identifying the text type
- skimming for the main ideas and identifying arguments
- evaluating a text
14 Unit 14: Modern life - skimming for main ideas
- inferring information which is not clearly stated
- identifying the writer’s intentions and attitude
Unit 15: Other people, other ways
- previewing a text
- identifying arguments
- looking for clues to text structure
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