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Download miễn phí Luận văn A Study on some possible effective pre-Reading activities to improve reading skills for the 2nd -year English Majors at the Military Science Academy
Considering the need to learn reading at the MSA, the importance role of reading in the students’ future job and its practical purposes, More Reading Power appears to be one of the most suitable and productive textbook for second year students. Many students have a conceptualization of reading which is interferes with their reading in English. More Reading Power aims to Giúp students acquire an accurate understanding of what it means to read in English. Student awareness of reading and thinking process is further encouraged in many parts of the book by exercises which require them to work in pairs or small groups. In discussion with others, students need to formulate and articulate their ideas more precisely, and so they also acquire new ways of talking and thinking about a text. Students are also required to write and then read each other’s work so they can experience the connections between reading and writing. This book is different from other reading books. More Reading Power is divided into four parts so the learners can practice in four different kinds of reading skills.
Tóm tắt nội dung:
for bridging the gap between the text’s content and the reader’s schemata”.
Focusing on L1 reading instruction, Taglieber, Johnson and Yarbough (1988: 456) point out the motivational aspect of Pre-reading activities. According to these writers, pre-reading activities activate or develop prior knowledge, provide knowledge of the text structure and also establish a reason for reading.
It can not be denied that Pre-reading activities play a crucial important role in motivating the students through the reading lesson. The aim of using Pre-reading activities is to activate the reader’s background knowledge, to prevent failure, and to support the reader’s interpretation of the text. Employing Pre-reading activities in the first stage of the reading lesson can promote interaction between the reader and the text. Ur (1996) emphasises that the aim of Pre-reading activities is to provide anticipation and activate reader in the next stages of the reading process. The purpose of using these activities is to develop a better self-awareness of the relationship between the reader’s meaning and the author’s meaning; and to Giúp readers understand the teacher’s expectations and views.
1.5. Summary
In this chapter, the relevant literature which has helped from the theoretical background and conceptual framework for the study is presented. First, definitions of reading and reading comprehension have been given. Second, some kinds of reading suggested by different theorists have been presented and taken into consideration. What is more, concepts and ideas about motivation in general and in second language learning in particular have been mentioned. In addition, the importance of motivation and the factors affecting the students’ motivation in learning reading skill as well as definitions and the importance of Pre-reading activities have also been reviewed. The next chapter will display the methodology and findings of the research in the light of the theories mentioned above.
Chapter 2
THE STUDY
2.1. Introduction
In this chapter, the author attempts to outline two parts of the study. The first part focuses on the current situation of teaching and learning reading skill at the MSA, in which the description of the subjects as well as settings for the study and instruments are discussed. The second part is an analysis on the data collected from the survey questionnaires and the class observation.
2.2. Situation analysis
2.2.1. Aims of the study
Being a teacher of English at the English Department, MSA for over ten years, I have decided to carry out a survey on pre-reading activities conducted by the teachers and students at the MSA in order to find out whether the assumption above is true or not. Finally, I will come up with a suggestion of some possible pre-reading activities with the hope to motivate students in reading lessons as well as to improve their reading skills in general.
2.2.2. The setting of the study
This study was conducted at the MSA, where the author is teaching. The Academy has been in operation for more than fifty years. It is the unique Military College of the Ministry of Defense that train teachers, translators, interpreters and others who need foreign languages in their jobs. English is only one of many other languages taught such as French, Chinese, Russian, Thai, etc. The students have to go through a four-year course learning both background and specialized knowledge.
Like other languages, in the English Department, English is taught in a formal setting known as a classroom. The teaching is divided into two stages. During the first stage, students spend the first two years studying general English and the four macro language skills such as speaking, reading, listening and writing under the guidance of the teachers. Usually, three or four teachers are in charge of a class, each of them is responsible for teaching one or two language skills using certain textbooks selected by the staff of the Department and additional materials chosen by the teachers themselves. At the second stage, the students have to spend time on studying other subjects like grammar, phonetic, lexicology, country study, translations, methodology English and American literature, etc. The students have English classes almost every working day. However, class time spent for reading skill might not be sufficient enough; particularly at an intermediate level because there are only two periods of reading per week (each period lasts for 45 minutes).
Furthermore, the students learn English in the Vietnamese context and do not have any chance to be in contact with the native speakers, thus, they are only learn English in a foreign language setting. This is another obstacle that prevents them from mastering English in general and the reading skill in particular.
2.2.3. Subjects
This study was carried out with the participation of 30/45 full-time teachers aged from 25 to 45 (half of them have been in Great Britain, Australia, America and India for further training) and 80/110 second-year students and they are learning text book More Reading Power.
(*) Of the 30 teachers, they all have Diploma Degree in English while twenty of them have M.A. Degree in Education, Linguistics, or International Relations and another one has Ph.D. Degree in Linguistics. Most of them have at least three years of teaching, therefore, with no doubt, they are experienced and enthusiastic teachers, they are always willing to Giúp their students overcome the difficulties and make progress in learning English. These teachers are now teaching English to the students of different courses at the MSA: full time, short time courses (These courses last for about two years and they are used for Army Officers who have Diploma Degree in other foreign languages and now are serving in different branches of the Army belonging to the Ministry of Defense).
(*) The 80 students under investigation are in the second term of the second year at the English Department of the MSA (both cadet and civilian students, male and female). These students’ ages are between 20 and 22 years old. They are supposed to have quite an equal knowledge of English before entering the MSA since most of them have learnt English for at least 7 years (from grade 6 to grade 12 at school). Moreover, they all passed a very challenging entrance exam. Some of them come from Hanoi, the rest come from different provinces around the country. These students were chosen from 110 second year students during the school year of 2006-2007. They have completed their first three terms of the four-year course. Of course it was very difficult to select a sample of individuals since the students had already assigned to four different classes.
2.2.4. Reading materials
2.2.4.1. An overview of the textbook More Reading Power
English has been made compulsory in the curriculum of our Academy. It is mainly taught to those who work for the Ministry of Defense and most of them are army officers-to-be. When they enter the academy, they continue to study English for at least four years. During this time, they are divided into two stages: The first stage is for pre-intermediate and intermediate levels. The second one is for upper-intermediate and advanced levels. The students have to work very hard to gain knowledge of English to support for their jobs when graduating since they use English as main tool in their work. For the last several years, English teaching methodology has been improved much and course-books have been changed yearly to meet the demand of the students at the MSA. The text book More Reading Power is chosen as a core text book for teaching reading to the second year students at our Academy. They have only 30 periods of reading for each term, which counts for 60 periods for the whole second year, so the teacher who teaches reading has to select only some typical reading lessons in the textbook More Reading Power for teaching, but not all the lessons included in the book. Other texts have been read by the students themselves at home as homework or reference materials.
2.2.4.2. Structure of the textbook More Reading Power
Considering the need to learn reading at the MSA, the importance role of reading in the students’ future job and its practical purposes, More Reading Power appears to be one of the most suitable and productive textbook for second year students. Many students have a conceptualization of reading which is interferes with their reading in English. More Reading Power aims to Giúp students acquire an accurate understanding of what it means to read in English. Student awareness of reading and thinking process is further encouraged in many parts of the book by exercises which require them to work in pairs or small groups. In discussion with others, students need to formulate and articulate t...
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