Thesis Explicit reading strategy instruction for vietnamese non-english major tertiary students

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES HUYNH THI LONG HA EXPLICIT READING STRATEGY INSTRUCTION FOR VIETNAMESE NON-ENGLISH MAJOR TERTIARY STUDENTS DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING HUE, 2022 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƢỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ HUỲNH THỊ LONG HÀ HƢỚNG DẪN TRỰC TIẾP CÁCH SỬ DỤNG CÁC CHIẾN LƢỢC ĐỌC HIỂU CHO SINH VIÊN TIẾNG ANH KHÔNG CHUYÊN BẬC ĐẠI HỌC TẠI VIỆT NAM MÃ SỐ: 9 14 01 11 LUẬN ÁN TIẾN SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƢƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC TS. Nguyễn Thị Bảo Trang TS. Trƣơng Bạch Lê HUẾ, NĂM 2022 i DECLARATION I certify that the present dissertation submitted today entitled: “EXPLICIT READING STRATEGY INSTRUCTION FOR VIETNAMESE NON-ENGLISH MAJOR TERTIARY STUDENTS” for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in theory and methodology in English language teaching, has been composed solely by myself and that it has not been submitted, in whole or in part, in any previous application for a degree, contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree in any institute, college, or university, and previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text of the dissertation. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper and the research process behind it would not have been possible without the exceptional support of my supervisors, Doctor Nguyen Thi Bao Trang and Doctor Truong Bach Le, who provided instruction, feedback and encouragement to various steps of the study and to various versions of this dissertation with the support and words of wisdom. I was exceptionally fortunate to have them as mentors for this work. Their long- lasting patience, enthusiasm, knowledge and exacting attention to detail have been an inspiration and kept my work on track from my first encounter to the final draft of this paper. They have devoted their heart and mind to support me, understood my difficulties, sympathized my circumstances and accompanied me to the end of the PhD journey. Without their invaluable guidance and scholarly advice, this work would not have taken its final shape. I would also like to extend my sincere gratitude to teachers, lecturers and professors of University of Foreign Languages and Foreign Studies, Hue University for patiently and wholeheartedly guiding me through the process required to complete my program of study. Their support, encouragement, and willingness to serve as academic committee members were of huge benefit to me. I also owe many thanks to my colleagues and best friends who offered me their generous assistance of review the tests, transcribing the interviews, translating the questionnaire, interviews and learning reflections and coding the data for double check. Their ongoing support concerning the study contributed to my success. A special mention also goes to my colleagues whose understanding, sympathy, and support were invaluable spiritual strength for me during the process of completing this work. I am also immensely grateful to the non- English major students who took part in the intervention for both pilot and main study. I am particularly indebted to my parents, my mother-in-law, my husband, my two sisters and my two children for their understanding, support and compassion throughout the years of study. Without the constant financially and spiritually support of my parents and my mother-in-law, I hardly complete my PhD journey. My heartfelt gratitude also goes to my husband for his spiritual support and empathy for my hard work and sometimes my irritation when I got stuck with the study. I would like to express my special thanks to my daughter, Khanh Ngoc and my son, Tri Dung, for becoming more independent of their learning and tolerant of my various times of absence from family gatherings. The love and encouragement of my family gave me strength and determination to complete the study. iii Abstract The present study investigated the implementation of explicit reading strategy instruction for Vietnamese non-English major tertiary students. It first explored the students‘ use of reading strategies in reading English level 3 texts before and after the explicit strategy instruction (ESI). Also, it explored the students‘ perceptions of the instruction. The study was a mixed-method design to explore how Vietnamese non- English major students perceived the impacts of strategy instruction on reading comprehension. Data were collected from forty-five non-English major students at a university in Vietnam by means of questionnaires, group interviews and learning reflections. First, one questionnaire about reported reading strategies use was administered to 45 non-English major tertiary students in one class before the intervention. Then the instruction was conducted for 6 weeks in which students were taught explicitly previewing and predicting, skimming, scanning, guessing meaning of the unknown words from the context and summarizing strategies. After the instruction, students completed the same questionnaire again. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted in groups of three to four students, and thirty-nine learning reflections were collected to obtain in-depth information about the impact of the ESI. The findings revealed that Vietnamese non-English major tertiary students used different reading strategy categories in reading English level 3 texts from medium to high levels before the instruction. Specifically, global strategies were preferred in the pre-reading stage whereas problem-solving and local strategies were reported to be used more frequently in the while- reading and post-reading stages. After the instruction, they also reported using various reading strategies in four strategy categories namely problem- solving, global, support and local strategies from a medium to high frequency. In addition, the ESI was perceived to be cognitively beneficial, through students‘ reported heightened awareness of using reading strategies in reading comprehension, expanded reading strategy repertoire, greater reading fluency, and higher reading score. From a non-cognitive affective perspective, students reported that the ESI motivated them to read, and read with a higher level of confidence, and become more autonomous in reading in English. The study offers implications for teachers, students and materials writers in teaching and learning the English reading skill in non-English major learning contexts and perhaps in other settings. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CEFR : The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages EFL : English as a foreign language ESL : English as a second language L1 : First language/ the mother tongue L2 : Second language M : Mean (value) MOET : Ministry of Education and Training N : Number NFLP : Vietnam‘s National Foreign Languages Project QUAN : Quantitative QUAL : Qualitative SPSS : Statistical Package for the Social Sciences S.D : Standard deviation ESI : Explicit strategy instruction v TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ........................................................................................................... i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ..............................................................................................v LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................... ix LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................x CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................1 1.1. Background context of the study ........................................................................1 1.2. Rationale of the study .........................................................................................3 1.3. Purpose of the study and research questions ......................................................5 1.4. Scope of the Study ..............................................................................................6 1.5. Significance of the study ....................................................................................6 1.6. Structure of the study .........................................................................................7 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................9 2.1. Definitions of key terms .....................................................................................9 2.2. Reading and reading comprehension in a second language (L2) .....................10 2.2.1. Reading in a second language ................................................................10 2.2.2. Reading comprehension in a second language .......................................11 2.3. Processes in L2 reading ....................................................................................13 2.3.1. Bottom-up model ....................................................................................13 2.3.2. Top-down model ....................................................................................14 2.3.3. Interactive model ....................................................................................15 2.4. Reading strategies .............................................................................................19 2.4.1. Definitions of reading strategies ............................................................19 2.4.2 The role of reading strategies ..................................................................21 2.4.3 Categorizations of reading strategies ......................................................21 2.5. Strategy instruction and EFL reading ...............................................................25 2.5.1. Strategy instruction .................................................................................25 2.5.2. Rationale for the instruction ...................................................................27 2.5.3. Explicit reading strategy instruction versus implicit reading strategy instruction .........................................................................................................28 vi 2.6. Description of the strategy instruction procedures ...........................................29 2.6.1. Strategy instruction models ....................................................................29 2.6.2. Strategy instructional process .................................................................31 2.6.3. The framework and focus of the instruction ..........................................33 2.6.4. Materials for the instruction ...................................................................35 2.7. Previous research on reading strategies ...........................................................36 2.7.1. Descriptive research ...............................................................................36 2.7.2. Experimental research ............................................................................39 2.8. Summary of the chapter ...................................................................................46 CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ......................................................47 3.1. Research approach and research design ...........................................................47 3.1.1. Research approach ..................................................................................47 3.1.2. Research design ......................................................................................49 3.2. Research Setting and Sample ...........................................................................51 3.2.1. Research setting ......................................................................................51 3.2.2. Participants .............................................................................................51 3.2.3. The role of the researcher .......................................................................54 3.3. Research instruments ........................................................................................54 3.3.1. Questionnaire ..........................................................................................55 3.3.2. Interview .................................................................................................60 3.3.3. Learning reflections ................................................................................62 3.4. Research procedures .........................................................................................63 3.4.1. Phase:1 Pre instruction ...........................................................................64 3.4.2. Phase 2: The instruction .........................................................................66 3.4.3. Phase 3: Post- instruction .......................................................................67 3.5. Data analysis .....................................................................................................70 3.5.1. Analysis of the questionnaire data .........................................................70 3.5.2 Analysis of interviews and learning reflections ......................................70 3.6. Summary of the research methods ...................................................................73 3.7. Ethical considerations .......................................................................................73 3.8. Validity .............................................................................................................74 3.9. Reliability .........................................................................................................75 3.10. Summary of the chapter .................................................................................76 vii CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS ............................................................................................77 4.1. Students‘ reported use of reading strategies before the explicit strategy instruction (ESI) ......................................................................................................77 4.1.1. Overall use of reading strategies before the explicit strategy instruction (ESI) .................................................................................................................77 4.1.2. Pre-reading strategies use .......................................................................78 4.1.3. While-reading strategies use before instruction .....................................81 4.1.4. Post- reading strategies use before instruction .......................................83 4.2. Impact of the explicit reading strategy instruction ...........................................85 4.2.1. Impacts on the use of reading strategies as reported in the questionnaire ....85 4.2.2. Students‘ perceptions on the impact of explicit strategy instruction .....94 4.3. Summary of the chapter ................................................................................ 111 CHAPTER 5. DISCUSSION ................................................................................... 112 5.1. Students‘ use of reading strategies in reading English level 3 texts before instruction ............................................................................................................. 113 5.1.1. Overall reading strategy use before instruction................................... 113 5.1.2. Pre- reading strategies use before instruction ..................................... 114 5.1.3. While- reading strategies use before instruction ................................. 115 5.1.4. Post- reading strategy use before instruction ...................................... 118 5.2. The impacts of the explicit reading strategy instruction ............................... 119 5.2.1. Impact on the use of reading strategies as reported in the questionnaire .. 119 5.2.2. Impact of the instruction on cognitive reading processes and affective values as reported from interviews and reflections ....................................... 123 5.3. Summary of the chapter ................................................................................ 130 CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS ....................................... 132 6.1. Key Findings and Conclusion ....................................................................... 132 6.2. Implications ................................................................................................... 134 6.2.1. Implications for teachers and classroom teaching............................... 134 6.2.2. Implications for students ..................................................................... 135 6.2.3. Implications for English materials writers .......................................... 136 6.3. Contributions of the study ............................................................................. 136 6.3.1. Theoretical contributions ..................................................................... 136 6.3.2. Methodological contributions ............................................................. 137 6.3.3. Practical contributions ......................................................................... 138 viii 6.4. Limitations of the study ................................................................................. 138 6.5. Recommendations for further research ......................................................... 139 6.6. Final thoughts ................................................................................................ 140 LISTS OF AUTHOR’S WORK .............................................................................. 141 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................... 142 APPENDICES APPENDIX A APPENDIX B APPENDIX D APPENDIX E APPENDIX F ix LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1. Definitions of reading strategies...................................................................20 Table 2.2. Framework for reading strategies instruction ...............................................34 Table 2.3. Focus of the instruction ................................................................................35 Table 3.1. Participants‘ age and gender.........................................................................52 Table 3.2. Grade levels of participants‘ English learning starting time ........................53 Table 3.3. Participants‘ home and school location ........................................................53 Table 3.4. Description of reading strategy categories in SORS ....................................57 Table 3.5. The questionnaire design ..............................................................................59 Table 3.6. The reliability of the pilot questionnaire .....................................................65 Table 3.7. The reliability of the official questionnaire ..................................................65 Table 3.8. Summary of the Research Methods ...................................