An investigation into english reading strategies employed by ethnic minority junior first-year english major students at tay bac university

An investigation into english reading strategies employed by ethnic minority junior first-year english major students at tay bac university

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1.1 Rationale

Internationally, within the field of education over the last few decades a gradual but significant shift has taken place, resulting in less emphasis on teachers and teaching and greater stress on learners and learning This change has been reflected in various ways in language education Teaching English as a second or foreign language (TESL/TEFL) has also changed tremendously Most significantly, the traditional teacher-centred approach has been replaced with the learner-centred one, which reflects a desire to explore ways of making teaching responsive to learner needs and interests and allowing learners to play a fuller, more active and participatory role in the day-to-day teaching and learning processes Inherent in this approach is a shift in the responsibilities of both teachers and students in the foreign language classroom No longer does the teacher act as the centre of all instruction, controlling every aspect of the learning process Learners themselves now, more than ever, are sharing the responsibility for successful language acquisition and, in doing so, are becoming less dependant on the language teacher for meeting their own individual language learning needs By giving students more responsibility for their own language development, language programs are inviting learners to become more autonomous, to diagnose some of their own learning strengths and weaknesses and to sift-direct the process of language development.

Then, for all L2 teachers who aim to develop their students' communicative competence and language learning, an understanding of language learning strategies is crucial As Oxford (1990) puts it, language learning strategies" are specially important for language learning because they are tools for active, self-directed involvement, which is essential for developing communicative competence" (p.1) According to Nunan (1999), learner-centeredness does not mean that teachers should devaluating their own professional roles or handling their duties and responsibility to the learner Learner-centered instruction "is a matter of educating learners so that they can gradually assume greater responsibility for their own learning" (Nunan, 1999: 12) and research suggests that training students to use language learning strategies can help them become better language learners In the field of second language acquisition, focus has been shifted away from finding perfect teaching

methodologies to investigating why some learners are very successful in their language learning while others are not although they have made as much effort learning the language Several studies that have been carried out by Oxford (1990), O'Malley and Chamot (1990), Nunan (1991), Rubin and Thompson (1994) and Cohen (1998) have shown that one of the most important factors that distinguish successful learners from unsuccessful ones is their learning strategies In other words, successful learners do use some effective learning strategies to deal with problems that emerge during their learning process while unsuccessful ones employ inappropriate or ineffective strategies resulting in their failure in their language learning This finding has provoked interest among researchers and teachers in identifying learning strategies employed by good language learners with a view to training bad learners to use such effective learning strategies.

In Vietnam, learning strategies have also become a topic of interest in recent years when the concepts of "self-learning" and "life-long learning" have been familiar to the ears of both Vietnamese teachers and learners Several studies into this field have been conducted with different type of learners to find out particular strategies employed by effective and ineffective learners such as Huyen Tran study (2004) on vocabulary learning strategies used by students of English at Quy Nhon University or Mai Duong's (2005) on writing strategies employed by first-year students at Hanoi National University or Nguyen Thi Thu Ha's (2006) on reading strategies employed by second-year bridge and road students at the University of Transport and Communications or Mai Van Binh's (2007) on vocabulary learning strategies preferred by students at College of Finance and Business Administration However, studies as such are still scarce, thus, more research should be done in order to clarify particular strategies used in different settings and by learners of different levels.

At Tay Bac University (TBU), reading is regarded as an important skill to the students because these students need to read a lot of English books and documents to support their professional studies However, apart from some students who are quite good at English reading, most students especially ethnic minority junior ones find reading difficult They often complain that they have little understanding of the text they have read and hardly finish their reading exercises and exams successfully Having taught English majored students at TBU for several years, I am aware of their problems and very much want to help them to improve their reading ability Therefore, I intend to examine their reading strategies to find out the reading

strategies used by students of lower reading ability Based on the findings, I am going to make some implications to improve TBU students' reading proficiency.

1.2 Scope, aims and significance of the study1.2.1 Scope of the study

The present study investigates the reading strategies used by readers among ethnic minority junior first-year English-majored students at Tay Bac University (hereafter TBU) The study of learning strategies in other English skills would be beyond the scope.

1.2.2 Aims of the study

The major purposes of this study are:

(1) to identify the reading strategies utilized by readers among ethnic minority junior first-year English-majored students at Tay Bac University;

(2) to inform the concerned teachers so that they can find ways to improve their students' reading proficiency.

In order to achieve the above aims of the study, the following major research question will be addressed:

- What are the reading strategies employed by readers among TBU ethnic minorityjunior first-year English-majored students?

1.2.3 Significance of the study

The study is the first one to be carried out in the field of reading strategies research at TBU It helps give a detailed description of reading strategies used by readers among first-year English- majored students at junior grade at the university More importantly, the findings of their reading strategies can help teachers to understand more about their students and they can serve as the foundation for some recommendations on how to improve the

students' reading proficiency They are also an important basic for reading strategy based instruction to be implemented in the future.

1.3 Method of the study

In order to achieve the aims mentioned above, the present study utilized quantitative method including tests and survey questionnaires to collect data on the reading strategies employed by TBU students First, the two reading comprehension tests were given to the subjects in order to identify their English reading proficiency levels Then, the questionnaires were administered to find out their reading strategies.

After the data is analyzed and discussed, some conclusions will be drawn, and some

suggestions will be raised in the thesis.

1.4 Organization of the thesis

The study is divided into five chapters

Chapter 1 includes the rationale, scope, aims, significance, methods and organization of the study.

Chapter 2 reviews the literature relevant to the topic of research and summarizes some selected studies on reading strategies, which serve as a theoretical and methodological foundation of the study.

Chapter 3 presents the research methodology of the study It provides information about the participants, the research method, the instrumentation, the data collection procedures and data analysis.

Chapter 4, the main part of the study that reports, discusses the main findings according to the research question.

Chapter 5 is the conclusion that summarizes the findings, presents the implications and limitations of the study and finally give some suggestions for further research.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW2.1 Introduction

This chapter reviews theories related to learning strategies in general and reading strategies in particular It also summarizes some studies on reading strategies that have been conducted so far All of these serve as a basic for an investigation into reading strategies which is carried out and presented in the next chapter.

2.2 Language learning strategies

2.2.1 Learning strategies - The definitions

Over the last two decades, the study of learning strategies has seen as "explosion of activity" (R Ellis, 1994) with the contributions of such well-known researchers as Tarone (1981), Weinstein and Mayer (1986), Rubin (1987), O' Malley and Chamot (1990), Oxford (1990) and Cohen (1998) These studies have helped figure out a comprehensive overview of learning strategies.

Although research on learning strategies is becoming increasingly popular, there have been some considerable differences in the definition of learning strategies in the literature Taron (1981) claimed that "Learning strategies as attempts to develop linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in the target language" Learning strategies, according to Weinstein and Mayer (1986) (in O' Malley and Chamot 1990), have learning facilitation as a goal and are intentional on the part of the learner The goal of strategy use is to "affect the learner's motivational or affective state, or the way in which the learner selects, acquires, organizes, or integrates new knowledge." (1986: 43) These definitions are too general in comparison to the complex nature of learning strategies.

Oxford (1990) defined learning strategies as "specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new situations" (1990: 5) This definition is judged to be quite comprehensive as it not only covers the cognitive but also the affective aspects of learning strategies (i.e to

increase enjoyment in learning) However, Oxford's definition is not sufficient in the sense that it regards learning strategies as "specific actions", i.e learning strategies are behavioral, and therefore, they are mostly observable However, many studies in this field have shown that learning strategies are difficult to observe as they are not only behavioral.

In an attempt to define learning strategies in a more sensible manner, Weinstein and Mayer (in Ellis,1994: 531) claimed that learning strategies "are the behaviors and thoughts that a learner engages in during learning that are intended to influence the learner's encoding process" Thus, these two authors see learning strategies both behavioral and mental Their view has been shared by most researchers in strategies studies.

The definition that has been widely accepted to date was proposed by O' Malley and Chamot (1990) According to them, learning strategies are "the special thoughts or behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn or retain new information" (1990: 1) In spite of being quite short, their definition covers the most important aspects of learning strategies, that is learning strategies are both mental and behavioral (therefore both observable and unobservable), and learning strategies are individually characterized (i.e every learner's strategies are different) Because of its comprehensive features, the present study utilized this definition as the key direction in its investigation.

2.2.2 Why studying learning strategies?

When commenting on the role of learning strategies, Weinstein and Mayer (in O' Malley and Chamot 1990) say that learning facilitation is the goal of learning strategies, which are intentional on the part of the learner The goal of learning strategy use is to "affect the learner's motivational or affective state, or the way in which the learner selects, acquires, organizes, or integrates new knowledge." (1986: 43).

Oxford (1990), one of the leading teachers and researchers in language learning strategies field, also gives her own evaluation on learning strategies: "strategies are especially important for language learning because they are tools for active, self-directed involvement, which is essential for developing communicative competence" (1990: 1)

As a teacher of English, my strong belief is that " It takes better teachers to focus on the learner" (Peter Strevens, cited in Oxford, 1990: 193) and "We cannot teach another

directly; we can only facilitate his learning (Carl Rogers, cited in Oxford, 1990: 193) The current approach that is encouraged to be taken to teach English in our country in general and in our own language setting in particular is communicative language teaching in which learners are central to the learning process Helping learners to be independent during their learning process is a task of every teacher To gain this aim, one of the suggestions is that learners should be equipped various strategies so that they control their own learning process confidently and independently That is the reason why learning strategies are chosen as the topic of this thesis.

2.2.3 Classification of learning strategies

Much of the earlier research (Rubin 1975 and 1981; Stern 1975; Naiman et al 1978) focused on compiling inventories of the learning strategies that learners were observed to use or reported to use.

Rubin (1981) proposed a classification scheme that subsumes learning strategies under two primary groupings and a number of subgroups Rubin's first primary category, consisting of strategies that directly affect learning, includes clarification/verification, monitoring, memorization, guessing/inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning and practice The second category, consisting of strategies that contribute indirectly to learning, includes creating practice opportunities and using production tricks such as communication strategies An alternative classification scheme proposed by Naiman et al (1978) contains five broad categories of learning strategies and a number of secondary categories The primary classification includes an active task approach, realization of language as a means of communication and interaction, management of affective demands and monitoring of second language performance.

Subsequent descriptive studies have endeavored to identify broad classes of learning strategies, under which a large number of more specific strategies can be grouped The works by Wenden (1983), Oxford (1990), O'Malley et at (1985a and 1985b), O'Malley and Chamot (1990) have made an important contribution to our knowledge of learning strategies Wenden's (1983) research examined the strategies that adult foreign language learners use in order to direct their own learning She identifies three general categories of self-directing strategies: (1)

knowing about language (relating to what language and language learning involves), (2) planning (relating to what and how of language learning), and (3) self-evaluation (relating to progress in learning and learner's response to the language experience) Wenden's framework devised as a basic for learner training.

R Oxford (1990) built on the earlier classifications with the aim of subsuming within her taxonomy virtually every strategy previously mentioned in the literature Oxford (1990) draws a general distinction between direct and indirect strategies The former consists of memory, cognitive and compensation strategies while the later includes metacognitive, affective and social strategies However, Oxford's classification of learning strategies is somewhat complicated and confusing as she treats compensation strategies as a direct type of learning strategies and memory strategies as separate ones from cognitive strategies.

Perhaps, the framework that has been most useful and generally accepted is O'Malley and Chamot (1990)'s In O'Malley and Chamot 's framework, three major types of strategies are distinguished in accordance with the information processing model, on which their research is based Metacognitive strategies are "higher order executive skills that may entail planning for, monitoring or evaluating the success of learning activity" (O'Malley and Chamot: 44) Cognitive strategies "operate directly on incoming information, manipulating it in ways that enhance learning" O'Malley and Chamot, 1990: 44) The last subtypes of these strategies presented in Table 2.1 were identified by O'Malley and Chamot on the basis of their several descriptive studies on learning strategies used by second language learners.

Previewing the main ideas and concepts of the material to be learned, often by skimmingthe text for the organization principle.

Directed attentionDeciding in advance to attend in general to a learning task and to ignore irrelevantdistracters.

Functionalplanning

Planning for and rehearsing linguistic components necessary to carry out an outcoming task.Selective attentionDeciding in advance to attend to specific aspects of input, often by scanning for key words,

concepts and/or linguistic markers

Self-managementUnderstanding the conditions that help one learn and arranging for the presence of those

conditions.Monitoring

Self-monitoringChecking one's comprehension during listening or reading or checking the accuracy and/orappropriateness of one's oral or written production while it is taking place.

ResourcingUsing target language reference materials such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, or textbooks.RepetitionImitating the language model, including overt practice and silent rehearsal.

GroupingClassifying words, terminology or concepts according to their attributes or meanings.DeductionApplying rules to understand or produce the second language or making up rules based on

language analysis.

ImageryUsing visual images (either mental or actual) to understand or remember new information.Auditory

Planning back in one's mind the sound of a word, phrase or longer language sequence.Key word methodRemembering a new word in the second language by: (1) identifying a familiar word in the

first language that sounds like or otherwise resembles the new word, and (2) generatingeasily recalled images of some relationship with the first language homonym and the newword in the second language.

Elaborationrelating new information to prior knowledge, relating different parts or new information toeach other, or making meaningful personal associations with the new information.

TransferUsing previous linguistic knowledge or prior skills to assist comprehension or production.DifferencingUsing available information to guess the meanings of new items, predict outcomes or fill in

missing information.

Note takingWriting down key words or concepts in abbreviated verbal, graphic or numerical form whilelistening or reading.

RecombinationConstructing a meaningful sentence or larger language sequence by combining knownelements in a new way.

TranslationUsing the first language as a base for understanding and/or producing the second language.

Eliciting from a teacher or peer additional explanation, rephrasing, examples or verification.CooperationWorking together with one or more peers to solve a problem, pool information, check a

learning task, model a language activity, or get feedback on oral or written performance.Self-talkReducing anxiety by using mental techniques that make one feel competent to do the

learning task.

Table 2.1 Learning strategy definition and classification (O'Malley and Chamot, 1990: 119)

This classification of learning strategies is comprehensive and sufficient and it is applicable to learning strategy studies on four English disciplines Therefore, the current study will adopt O'Malley and Chamot's classification of learning strategies as the theoretical framework for investigation.

2.4 The theory of reading2.4.1 Definition of reading

For many foreign language or second language learners, reading is a very important skill Concerning the role of reading, Carrell (1988:1) stated that "Without solid reading proficiency, second language learners cannot perform at levels they must in order to succeed" Anderson (1999) also confirms that "the more exposure a student has to language through reading, the greater the possibilities that overall language proficiency will increase" (1999:3).

Reading plays such a significant part in the success of second language learning and it is essential to understand what reading really is However, the act of reading is not completely understood nor easily described In a general term, (Anderson,1999:1) defines reading as "an active, fluent process which involves the reader and the reading material in building meaning" This definition of reading has been generally shared by other researchers.

According to Rumelhart (1977), reading involves the reader, the text and the interaction between the reader and text Aebersold and Field (1997:15) share the same view on reading: "Reading is what happens when people look at a text and assign meaning to the written symbols in that text The text and the reader are the two physical entities necessary for the reading process to start It is, however, the interaction between the text and the reader that constitutes the actual meaning" These interaction, in their opinion, are the interactions between purpose and manner of reading and through reading strategies and schema Purpose determines how people read a text People may read the text to understand it (reading for full comprehension), or simply to get the general idea (skimming), to find the part that contains the information they need (scanning) Readers also use some mental activities that are often referred to as reading strategies to construct meaning from a text In addition, readers base on their previous knowledge that they bring meaning to the text to assist their reading

comprehension This prior knowledge is known as the schema Research in reading has shown that schema plays an important role in helping the reader to comprehend a text.

The above-mentioned views on reading are only general ones In order to understand more about the nature of reading, it is necessary to take a closer look at the actual process that really takes place in the reader's mind So far, several models have been proposed to describe this process The next section is going to present these models of reading and discuss their strengths and weaknesses.

2.4.2 Models of reading process

Up to now, attempts to describe the interaction between reader and text have been numerous and different views of the reading process have been proposed These views are

often grouped under three different reading models named the bottom-up, the top-down andthe interactive ones.

2.4.2.1 Bottom-up model

Early researchers often assumed a passive, bottom-up view of second language reading, that is it was viewed as "a decoding process of reconstructing the author's intended meaning" via recognizing the printed letters and words and building up a meaning for a text from the smallest textual units at the bottom (letters and words) to larger and larger units at the top (phrases, clauses, intersentencial linkages) (Rivers 1964, 1968; Plaister 1968; Yorio 1971) In other words, in the bottom-up reading model, the reader begins with the written text (the bottom) and constructs meaning from the letters, words, phrases and sentences found within and then processes the text in a linear fashion The coming data from the text must be received before the high level mental storage of understanding transform and recode the data.

Gough (1972) who supported this reading model explained the sequence of the reading system from a bottom-up perspective as follows: First, the graphemic information enters through the visual system and it is transformed at the first level from a letter character, that is from graphemic representation to a phonemic representation Second, the phonemic

representation is converted at level two into a word The meaning units or words then pass on to the third level and meaning is assimilated into the knowledge system.

In short, the bottom-up model tends to be linear as they start with the printed stimuli and proceed to higher level stage, one step after another The basis for bottom-up processing is the linguistic knowledge of the reader However, this model reveals several shortcomings in describing the actual reading process.

An important drawback of this model, as pointed out by Samuel and Kamil (1988: 31), is "the lack of feedback, in that no mechanism is provided to allow for processing stages which occur later in the system to influence processing which occurs earlier in the system Because of the lack of feedback loops in the early bottom-up models, it was difficult to account for sentence-context effects and the role of prior knowledge of text topic as facilitating variables in word recognition and comprehension.".

Due to this limitation, and together with the advent of Goodman's top-down view of reading, the bottom-up view of reading fell into disfavor.

2.4.2.2 Top-down model

About over three decades ago, the views on reading changed together with the top-down model of reading Goodman (1975:135) described reading as a "psycholinguistic guessing game", in which the "reader reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display" According to this point of view, the reader reconstructs meaning from written language by using graphonic, syntactic and semantic systems of the language, but he/she merely uses cues from the three levels of language to predict meaning, and most important, confirms these predictions by relating them to his/her past experiences and knowledge of the language.

Although Goodman did not characterize his theory as a top-down model, several other reading experts (Anderson 1978; Cziko 1978) have considered it as basically a concept-driven top-down pattern in which "higher level processes interact with and direct the flow of information through low level processes" (Stanovich 1980:34) In this top-down approach, the reader begins with a set of hypotheses or predictions about the meaning of text he is about to read and then selectively sample the text to determine whether or not his predictions are

correct Reading is a process of reconstructing meaning rather than decoding form, and the

reader only resorts to decoding if other means fail This perspective was shared by many other reading specialists such as Carrel (1988), Clarke and Siberstern (1977), Mackey and Mountford (1979) and Widdowson (1978, 1983) as they viewed reading as "an active process in which the second language reader is an active information processor who predict while sampling only parts of the actual text" (in Carrel, 1983;3).

Just like bottom-up models, top-down models do have some limitations These models "tend to emphasize such higher-level skills as the prediction of meaning by means of context clues or certain kinds of background knowledge at the expense of such lower skills as the rapid and accurate identification of lexical and grammatical form That is, in making the perfectly valid point that fluent reading is primarily a cognitive process, they tend to deemphasize the perceptual and decoding dimensions of that process" (Eskey,1988:93).

Samuel and Kamil (1988) also shared the same view According to them, one of the problems for the top-down model is that for many texts, the reader has little knowledge of the topic and cannot generate predictions A more serious problem is that even if a skilled reader could generate predictions, the amount of time necessary to generate a prediction may be greater than the amount of time the skilled reader needs simply to recognize the words.

Due to the above limitations of both bottom-up and top-down models, a new and more insightful model of reading process has been proposed by Rumelhart (1977, 1980) Sanford

and Garrod (1981) and Van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) under the name of interactive model.

2.4.2.3 Interactive model

The interactive model combines elements of both bottom-up and top-down approaches, using that "a pattern is synthesized based on information provided simultaneously from several knowledge sources" (Stanovich, 1980:35).

Widdownson (1979) has discussed reading as the process of combining textual information with the information the reader brings to a text In this view, the reading process is not simply a matter of extracting information from the text Rather, it is one in which the reading activates a range of knowledge in the reader's mind that he/she uses, and that, in turn, may be refined and extended by the new information supplied by the text.

Eskey (1988) defined the interactive model as a reading model that "posits a constant interaction between bottom-up and top-down processing in reading, each source of information contributing to a comprehensive reconstruction of the meaning of the text"(1988: 94) According to this view, good readers are regarded as "both good decoders and good interpreters of texts, their decoding skills become more automatic but no less important as their reading skill develops" (1984: 94) Eskey also believed that to achieve both fluency and accuracy in reading, developing readers must work at perfecting both their bottom-up recognition skills and their topdown interpretation strategies In other word, good reading -that is, fluent and accurate reading - can result only from a constant interaction between these two processes.

The following comment by Stanovich (1980) can summarize all the strengths of the interactive model over the other two models: "Interactive models of reading appear to provide a more accurate conceptualization of reading performance than strictly top-down or bottom-up models When combined with an assumption of compensatory processing (that a deficit in any particular process will result in a greater reliance on their knowledge sources, regardless of their level in the processing hierarchy), interactive models provide a better account of the existing data on the use of orthographic structure and sentence context by good and poor readers"(1980: 32)

Therefore, it is generally agreed that the interactive model is the best one that can truly reflect the reading process that takes place in the reader's mind In this process, the reader constantly shuttles between bottom-up and top-down processes and he can not be successful in reading comprehension without either of these two processes As this study focuses on reading strategies, the next part is going to summarize some outstanding studies on reading strategies that have been carried out.

2.5 Reading strategies

2.5.1 Definition of reading strategies

Much attention has been paid to the study of reading in general and reading strategies in particular Reading strategies are of interest for what they reveal about the way the readers

manage their interaction with written text and how these strategies are related to text comprehension.

As mentioned earlier, research in second language learning suggests that learners use a variety of strategies to assist them with the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of information C Brantmeior (2002) defined reading strategies as "the comprehension processes that readers use in order to make sense of what they read" (2002:1) This process may involve skimming, scanning, guessing, recognizing cognates and word families, reading for meaning, predicting, activating general knowledge, making inferences, following references and separating main ideas from supporting ones (Barnet, 1988) Obviously, some strategies may be more useful than others with different types of reading texts and tasks.

Based on O'Malley and Chamot's (1990), reading strategies can be understood as the special thoughts or behaviours that individuals use to help them to comprehend, learn and retain new information from the reading text These strategies are both observable and unobservable and individually different According to O'Malley and Chamot's (1990), reading strategies can be classified into three main types including metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies A categorization scheme of these strategies have been provided in section 2.1.

2.5.2 Review of reading strategies research

A considerable number of studies examine the comprehension strategies that second language readers utilize to process a text In these studies, the participants are quite diverse, some from elementary, secondary and university levels, some from remedial reading classes and others enrolled in courses taught at non-university language centres Obviously, the participants are of many different ages and backgrounds Furthermore, the investigators use a variety of research method and tasks to examine strategy type and frequency of strategy use including think-aloud reports, interviews, questionnaires, observations and written recalls (Bernhardt, 1991)

One of the earliest pieces of research on individual learners' reading strategies was conducted by Hosenfield (1977) She examined successful and unsuccessful readers to find out what types of cognitive operations they used to process written texts Participants were ninth grade students who were learning French Before conducting her study, she classified

readers based on a test of L2 reading Then, in an oral interview, participants were asked to read a text and do think-aloud reports (that is, she directed them to say in their first language whatever came to their mind while processing each sentence in the text) Hosenfield found out that the successful readers used the following kinds of strategies (1977: 233-4):

* Keep the meaning of the passage in mind * read in broad phrases

* skip inessential words

* guess from context the meaning of unknown words * have a good self-concept as a reader

* identify the grammatical category of words * demonstrate sensitivity to a different word order * examine illustrations

* read the title and make inferences from it

* use orthographic information (e.g capitalization) * refer to the side glossary

* use the glossary as the last resort * look up words correctly

* continue if unsuccessful at decoding a word or a phrase * recognize cognates

* use their knowledge of the world

* follow through with a proposed solution to a problem * evaluate their guesses.

Poor readers, on the other hand, translated sentences and lost the general meaning of the passage, rarely skipped words or looked up unknown words in a glossary and had a poor concept as a reader While these results clearly described the strategies the students used to process the text, they did not link the strategy use to comprehension of specific paragraphs or to text as whole The data only focused on sentence level comprehension so the results of the study did not reveal overall comprehension of the entire text.

A decade later, Block's (1986) study compared the reading comprehension strategies used by native English speakers and ESL students who were enrolled in remedial reading

course at the university level and she connected these behaviors to comprehension The participants were identified as non-proficient readers because they failed a college reading proficiency test before they study Subjects read two exploratory passages selected from an introductory psychology textbook, and were asked to think aloud while they reading (they reported after each sentence) After reading and retelling each passage, the participants answered twenty multiple choice comprehension questions Block developed a scheme to classify strategies that consisted of two types: general strategies and local strategies General strategies included the following behaviors: anticipate content, recognize text structure, integrate information, question information, distinguish main ideas, interpret the text, use general knowledge and associations to background, comment on behavior or process, monitor comprehension, correct behavior, focused on textual meaning as a whole, and react to the text Local strategies were: paraphrase, reread, question meaning of a clause or a sentence, question meaning of a word and solve a vocabulary problem Of the 9 ESL students in the study, the readers with higher comprehension scores on the retelling and the multiple choice questions integrated new information in the text with old information, distinguish main ideas from details, referred to their background and focused on textual meaning as a whole This means they all employed "general strategies" On the other hand, readers with low comprehension scores rarely distinguished main ideas from details, rarely referred to their background, infrequently focused on textual meaning and seldom integrated information.

Sarig (1987) investigated the contribution of L1 reading strategies and L2 language proficiency to L2 reading, as well as the relationship between L1 and L2 reading strategies Sarig's subjects were 10 female native Hebrew readers who were studying English as a foreign language Sarig classified the data from think-aloud reports into four general types of behaviors or responses: (1) technical aids, (2) clarification and simplification, (3) coherence detection and (4) monitoring moves Sarig's results revealed that subjects transferred strategies from L1 reading to L2 reading and that the same reading strategy types "accounted for success and failures in both languages to almost the same extent" (Sarig, 1987: 118) Top-down, global strategies led to both successful and unsuccessful reading comprehension The two language dependent strategies, the clarification and simplification strategies contributed to unsuccessful reading comprehension in both L1 and L2 Results also indicated that most of the strategies used during the reading comprehension process were particular to each reader or

that each individual read differently and used a different combination of strategies These results do not duplicate Block's (1986) where global strategies led to successful (not unsuccessful) reading comprehension.

Some studies have shown that better readers are also better strategy users Carrel (1989) for example, conducted a study to investigate the metacognitive awareness of second language reader strategies in both their first and second language and the relationship between this awareness and their comprehension Her first group of subjects was native Spanish speakers of intermediate and high-intermediate levels studying English as a second language at a university level institute Her second group consisted of native English speakers learning Spanish as a foreign language in first, second and third-year courses Carrel first asked subjects to read two texts, one in L1 and one in L2 She controlled for content schemata as both texts were on a general topic of language The subjects answered multiple choice comprehension questions about the text followed by a strategy use questionnaire Carrel correlated strategy use with comprehension and concluded that the ESL readers of more advanced proficiency level perceived "global" or top-down strategies as more effective With the Spanish as a L2 group, she found that at the lower proficiency levels, subjects used more bottom-up or "local" strategies.

The last study mentioned here was conducted by Block (1992) He investigated the comprehension monitoring process used by first and second language readers of English The subjects were 25 college freshmen and consisted of proficient and non-proficient readers of English While reading an expository text, the participants were asked to think aloud or more specifically, to "say everything they understood and everything they were thinking as they read each sentence" (Block, 1992: 323) The results indicated that when facing a vocabulary problem, proficient ESL readers used background knowledge, decided on whether the word contributed to the overall meaning of the passage, reread the sentence and used syntactic clues The meaning-based strategies are classified as global behaviors On the other hand, non-proficient ESL readers focused on identifying lexical problems and did little to figure out the meaning of the words.

From the above findings of research in reading strategies, it becomes clear that there are indeed differences between successful or good readers and less successful or poor readers in terms of strategy use Overall, more proficient readers combine both top-down and

bottom-up strategies in reading but tend to use more top-down strategies than bottom-bottom-up ones Specifically, they exhibit the following types of reading behaviors:

* overview text before reading

* employ context clues such as title, subheadings and diagrams

* look for important information while reading and pay great attention to it than other information

* attempt to relate important points in text to one another in order to understand the text as a whole

* activate and use prior knowledge to interpret text

* reconsider and revise hypothesis about the meaning of the text based on text content

* attempt to infer information from the text

* attempt to identify or infer the meaning of words not understood or recognized * monitor text comprehension

* use strategies to remember text (paraphrasing, repetition, making notes, summarizing, self-questioning etc)

* understand relationship between parts of text and recognize text structure * change reading strategies when comprehension is perceived not be proceeding smoothly

* evaluate the qualities of text

* reflect on and process additionally after a part has been read and anticipate or plan for the use of knowledge gained from the reading (Hosenfield 1977; Block 1986; Carrel 1986)

While this list is not priotized or complete, it helps provide a description of the characteristics of successful readers and serves as an important foundation for more research into reading.

However, a gap that can be found in these studies on reading strategies is that few researchers who have attempted to classify reading strategies into a more comprehensive scheme except for top-down and bottom-up strategies (or global or local strategies) That is the gap that the current thesis study tries to bridge by using O'Malley and Chamot's scheme to classify the reading strategies used by readers among the TBU students As mentioned earlier,

this scheme was developed by O'Malley and Chamot's (1990) based on their several descriptive studies on learning strategies in four English skills It can reflect the actual reading process as it contains both down and bottom-up strategies within its categories The top-down strategies included in this scheme are elaboration (relating prior knowledge to new information), transfer (using previous linguistic knowledge or prior skills to assist comprehension), inferencing (using the available information to guess meaning of new items and predict outcomes) and summarizing (making mental or oral summary of new information gained through reading) The bottom-up strategies are grouping (classifying words, terminology or concept according to their attributes or meanings), deduction (applying rules to understand the second language), recombination (constructing a meaningful sentence or larger language sequence by combing known elements in a new way), key word methods (remember a new word in the second language) and translation (using the first language as a base for understanding the second language) In addition, there are metacognitive strategies that involve executive processes in planning for reading, monitoring comprehension and evaluating how well one has achieved a reading activity Therefore, this classification framework is quite comprehensive and applicable to examining reading strategies In this study, the TBU subjects' reading strategies are classified according to this scheme.

2.6 Summary

This chapter has reviewed related theories on learning strategies in general and reading strategies in particular Some of the main points can be summarized as follows.

Concerning the definition of learning strategies, there have been quite different points of views by different scholars Some scholars see learning strategies as behaviors while others view them as thoughts and behaviors However, it is generally agreed that O'Malley and Chamot's definition is the most convincing as it covers the significant features of learning strategies: both mental and behavioral (both observable and unobservable) and individual characterized.

The classification of learning strategies is also a complex work done by a considerable number of researchers Based on descriptive studies on learning strategies of ESL and EFL learners, Rubin (1975), Naiman et al (1978), Wenden (1983), Oxford (1990), O'Malley et al

(1985a and 1985b) and O'Malley and Chamot (1990) have proposed useful schemes for classification of learning strategies Of these schemes, O'Malley and Chamot's framework has been most useful and generally accepted to date In O'Malley and Chamot's framework, three majors types including metacognotive, cognitive and social/affective strategies are distinguished in accordance with the information processing model, on which their research is based Such a detailed and sufficient classification learning strategies is presented in table 2.1 and is going to be adopted for the investigation of reading strategies for this study.

The second part of this chapter covers the important theories related to reading and an overview of studies on reading strategies of successful and unsuccessful learners These theorists describe a process that moves both bottom-up and top-down, depending on the type of text as well as on the reader's background knowledge, language proficiency level, motivation, strategy use and cultural shaped beliefs about reading In comparison to the bottom-up and top-down models, interactive models of reading provide a more accurate conceptualization of reading performance and describe exactly what really happens during the reading process According to this interactive model, good reading can only result from a constant interaction between the bottom-up and the top-down processes In other words, good readers are those who can "efficiently integrate" both of these processes This view is now shared by a majority of researchers in a numerous number of studies on reading.

The last part of the chapter discusses reading strategies, the focus of the thesis, in details Most of the researchers have concluded that there are indeed differences between effective and ineffective readers in terms of strategy used The more proficient readers often employed both top-down and bottom-up strategies but appear to use more top-down ones A detailed description of reading strategies employed by effective readers is provided so as to serve as the basic for any research into reading strategies.

The next chapter is the study on reading strategies used by the TBU students, which has been conducted in the light of the theories discussed above.

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

The previous chapter has provided a necessary theoretical background for the present study This chapter presents the methodology used for the data collection and analysis in the study It starts with a description of the participants and the setting of the study It also provides

information about the research method It then describes data collection instruments and analysis procedures of the study

3.1 The context of the study3.1.1 Participants

There are 54 students at the age of 17 to 22, of them 32 students are from different Ethnic Minority Groups including 14 students from Tay Group, 10 from Nung Group, 5 are from Muong Group, and the rest are from Thai Group The participants in this study were among these 32 ethnic minority students Of them there were 26 girls and 6 boys who mostly came from the countryside Most of these students were 19 years old (16 students), 11 were 20

years old and only 5 students were 21 years old All of them spent between 4-10 years

learning English in which 20 students have been learning English for 8 years Their proficiency levels were generally reported to be between elementary and pre-intermediate Table 3.1 summarizes the background information about the participants such as genders, ages, number of years learning English and their self-assessed English proficiency.

Totalnumber ofparticipant

GenderAge (years)Number of years

learning EnglishEnglish proficiency

Table 3.1 Background information about the participants

These junior students are now studying the second semester of the course majoring in English The course for these students lasts from the first year to the third year of training at the university They have to learn some professional subjects in English to become teachers of English after three years studying English at the university Therefore, English in general and reading skills in particular play a very important role in their study at the university.

There are some reasons for choosing these freshermen as the participants of this study Firstly, the training quality of these students is always of great concern to both the authority

and teachers at TBU The findings of the study would provide essential information for teachers to improve TBU students' reading proficiency and hence contribute to enhancing the overall training quality of these students Secondly, they are suitable participants for the study because they have already finished the first semester in English reading so their English reading proficiency is of great concern for me to conduct the study on reading strategies In addition, as these students are ones who I have been directly teaching, it is feasible for me to have favourable conditions to carry out all the steps of the research process.

3.1.2 Setting of the study

The present study was conducted from mid April to mid June when the participants were in the second semester of the first year Up to the time of the study, they had been studying English at the university for nearly a year with 3 reading periods per week (nearly 90 periods) They had been learning some books including Practise your reading skills by Hoang Hai Anh-Quach Ngoc Anh-Le Thi Minh Hien, Cause and Effect by Partricia Ackert and some other materials adapted to suit their proficiency levels such as New Headway Pre-intermediate All of the textbooks and materials aim to provide these students with basic knowledge of English At the time of the study, they were learning Cause and Effect by Partricia Ackert as a textbook for the first-year junior English majored students at Tay Bac University to study reading skills While using this book we found that the book matches the objectives of the learning program and students levels of proficiency because the book is for students who know the basic structures of English and have a vocabulary of about 2000 English words The 25 lessons are in 5 units The exercises provide practice with vocabulary, comprehension, inference, main idea, cause and effect, context clues, scanning, sequence, summarizing, word forms, articles, prepositions, two-word verbs, compound words, connecting words, and noun substitutes The topics in the five units are quite interesting and learners-friendly The book is also easy to study However, most of tasks are designed in the same way and in the same order so that teachers have to redesign the tasks and the activities quite often to match students interests Besides, teachers meet difficulties when they use this book because there is no teachers' book to support them and provide appropriate guidance to them In addition, students' levels of proficiency are not equal Among these students, 2 have