Vietnam national university, Hanoi University of Languages and international studies faculty of Post-graduate Studies KIỀU THỊ VÂN IMPROVING STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH THE USE OF GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS AT MILITARY MEDICAL UNIVERSITY: AN ACTION RESEARCH (Nâng cao kỹ đọc hiểu sinh viên bằng phương pháp sử dụng công cụ bảng biểu Học Viện Quân Y – Nghiên cứu hành động) MA MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Hanoi, 2011 Vietnam national university, Hanoi University of Languages and international studies faculty of Post-graduate Studies KIỀU THỊ VÂN IMPROVING STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH THE USE OF GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS AT MILITARY MEDICAL UNIVERSITY: AN ACTION RESEARCH (Nâng cao kỹ đọc hiểu sinh viên bằng phương pháp sử dụng công cụ bảng biểu Học Viện Quân Y – Nghiên cứu hành động) MA MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Cohort: MA 18 Supervisor: Lương Quỳnh Trang, M.A Hanoi, 2011 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Table of content iv List of Abbreviations vii List of figures viii List of tables ix PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Research questions Methods of the study Research procedure Scope of the Study Significance of the study Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 1 Action research 1 What is action research? 1 Why does a teacher need action research? 1 How does a teacher perform action research in a language classroom? 1 Summary Reading 1.What is Reading? 2 What is Reading Comprehension? Reading Comprehension Process The Schema Theory Bottom – up and Top-down processing 3 Interactive Processing An Overview of ESP What is ESP? English in Medicine 10 Approaches to Teach Reading 10 Grammar – Translation Approach 10 1.2.5 Communicative Language Teaching Approach 11 v Content-Based approach 11 2 Task-Based approach 12 Techniques to teach EE reading 12 In Pre-reading 12 In While-reading 13 In Post-reading 13 Reading Comprehension Levels 13 Graphic organizers 14 Definition of Graphic Organizers 14 Roles of Graphic Organizers 14 3 Types of graphic organizers employed in the research 15 3 Mind maps 15 3 The KWL 15 3 Venn Diagram 15 3 The “5 W’s” 15 Previous studies 15 CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY 17 Setting and participants 17 2 Stages of the action research 18 2.2.1 PRE – IMPROVEMENT STAGE 18 STEP 1: IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM 18 2 1 Conducting a survey to get information from students 18 2 Employing reading pre-test to evaluate students’ reading levels 18 STEP 2: FINDING CAUSES OF THE PROBLEM 19 2.1 Reading professional books and journals for ideas or suggestions 19 2 English language learners (ELL) 19 2 1.3 Factors Influencing Comprehension 20 2 TRY – OUT STAGE 20 STEP 3: DESIGNING STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVEMENT 20 2 Using a mind map 20 2.2 2 Using the KWL 20 2 Using the W’s 21 2 Using Venn diagram 21 STEP 4: TRYING – OUT STRATEGIES 21 2 POST – IMPROVEMENT STAGE 23 STEP 5: EVALUATING THE TRY – OUT 23 2 Using Final Questionnaire to collect data 23 2 Employing reading post – test to evaluate students’ reading levels 23 vi CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 24 Results of Student Questionnaire 24 1 The results of the Initial Student Questionnaire 24 The results of the Final Student Questionnaire 28 Results of the DRA 32 Result of Initial DRA 32 2 Result of Final DRA 32 CHAPTER 4: IMPLICATIONS FOR READING TEACHING 34 Summary and discussion of the main findings 34 Implications for more effective reading lessons 36 PART C: CONCLUSION 38 Conclusion 38 Limitations of the Study 38 Suggestions for further Research 38 References 39 Appendices X The Sample Lesson Plans XXI vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS DRA Developmental Reading Assessment EM: English in Medicine ESP: English for Specific Purposes MMU: Military Medical University L: Level SLP: Sample Lesson Plan viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Initial Questionnaire: Question results Figure 2:Initial questionnaire: Question results Figure 3:Initial questionnaire: Question results Figure 4:Initial questionnaire: Question results Figure 5:Initial questionnaire: Question results Figure 6:Initial questionnaire: Question results Figure 7:Initial questionnaire: Question results Figure 8:Final questionnaire: Question results Figure 9:Final questionnaire: Question results Figure 10:Final questionnaire: Question results Figure 11:Final questionnaire: Question results Figure 12:Final questionnaire: Question results Figure 13:Final questionnaire: Question results Figure 14:Final questionnaire: Question results Figure 15: Reading Comprehension Levels ix LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Initial Student DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) scores Table 2: Final Student DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) scores PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Viet Nam, reading seems to be the most important and useful activity in any language class, especially for the students of English as a foreign language Of the four language skills, reading has always received a great deal of attention, which is emphasized by Carrell (1981: p1) that “For many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills in a second language, particularly in English as a second teaching of foreign language” In fact, reading is considered an indispensable tool for academic study and career advancement And it is quite true to the case of Military Medical University, where the author is teaching Reading comprehension is crucial to a student’s success at school and further to becoming to a lifelong learner However, many students at Military Medical Academy are struggling with reading comprehension They find it difficult to catch the main ideas of the text, to distinguish facts and details, and to retain information longer Basically, they are at literal reading comprehension level Therefore, they often fail to catch the author’s thought From this fact, as a teacher of English, the author herself thinks that it is essential to find something new to improve her students’ reading comprehension level so that they can improve their reading comprehension As a result, the author decided to carry out the entitled study: “Improving students’ reading comprehension through the use of graphic organizers” The purpose of the study is to find out if graphic organizers can help students read more effectively The author of this research chose to carry out the action research to find out how much graphic organizers affected the students’ reading comprehension Based on the results of this action research, some changes and improvement were applied in the author’s lessons, and some appropriate strategies needed to be designed with the hope that the students would work more effectively in a reading lesson Research questions How much does the use of graphic organizers provide in developing the reading comprehension skill for students? How does the use of graphic organizers affect the students’ reading comprehension levels? Methods of the study This action research study used qualitative and quantitative research methods The goal of this study is to determine whether the examined techniques and strategies used to enhance students’ comprehension skills would have a positive affect on the ability of students to make sense of what they read Students would be able to build their comprehension skills of written material because of the exposure to and practice of the graphic organizers strategy Using these strategies would be increasingly beneficial to students as time goes on and they become comfortable and accustomed to applying them to their reading activities Allowing the students to apply these strategies to ESP texts would assist them in recognizing how the strategies could be flexible in helping them to gather an understanding of any genre of text for any comprehension skill For this action research project the author used two kinds of data collection instruments to gather information about the students involved, monitor the progress of the students when they applied the strategies throughout the research, and determine the effectiveness of the strategies based on the pre-tests and post-tests DRA is an assessment in which the students are given a passage to read and answer comprehension questions based on the reading Comprehension is the most important thing tested during this assessment This test was used to get a baseline comprehension score for the students The pre-tests were necessary to assess the reading comprehension level and skills the students possessed before the intervention of the strategy and used as a baseline score The post-tests were used to determine the effectiveness of the strategy used by the students during the research process by comparing the pre-test scores to the ones taken at the end of the six practice reading lessons The questionnaire was a useful way of gaining insight on the feelings the students have toward reading before exposure to the reading strategies and how those feelings were altered if any after exposure to the strategies Each of these tools was extremely useful in determining the effectiveness of the strategies being examined in this research project Research procedure This action research consists of three main stages: Pre – improvement stage, Try – out stage and Post – improvement stage Stage 1: Pre - improvement .. .University of Languages and international studies faculty of Post-graduate Studies KIỀU THỊ VÂN IMPROVING STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH THE USE OF GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS AT MILITARY MEDICAL. .. students at Military Medical University in Hanoi The research focuses on how graphic organizers affect these students’ reading comprehension in ESP reading lessons Significance of the study Many factors... helping them to gather an understanding of any genre of text for any comprehension skill For this action research project the author used two kinds of data collection instruments to gather information