Effectiveness of Reading Strategies for EFL students of Pre-Intermediate Level

THE MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN

THE UZBEK STATE WORLD LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY  
 

English Philology Faculty

Interactive Methods of Language

Teaching Department 

QUALIFICATION PAPER 
 

THEME: “Effectiveness of Reading Strategies for EFL students of Pre-Intermediate Level” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Admitted to defence 

________________                                 Done by: Ligay Irina, 4D

Head of the Department                                   Scientific Advisor:

                                                                         Boymirzayeva Feruza                                

M.T. Iriskulov                                                  Reviewer: 
 
 

Tashkent 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 

ABSTRACT……………………………………………….3

I. STATEMENT OF INTENT………………………....4

    II. LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………5

    III. PROCEDURES AND PROCESS

• RESEARCH PLAN…………………………..13
1. STATEMENT OF THE PURPOSE
2. METHOD
3. PROCEDURE
4. ANALYSIS
• DATA COLLECTION……………………….19

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION……………………25

                    1) RESULTS

                    2) DISCUSSION

V.  FINAL REFLECTIONS…………………………….40

VI. REFERENCE LIST…………………………………42

VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………..43

APPENDIX……………………………………………….47

Appendix 1 (Questionnaire)………………………….......

Appendix 2 (Reading Proficiency Test)……………….....

Appendix 3 (Reading Handouts)…………………………

Appendix 4 (Diagnostic Tests)………………………….. 
 
 

ABSTRACT 

            The paper presents the topic Effectiveness of Reading Strategies for EFL students of Pre-Intermediate Level. The purpose of the research is to identify the most effective reading strategy that can help enhance students’ reading comprehension. For this aim there were taken six particular strategies offered by different authors. In order to achieve the primary purpose of the qualification paper there were held experiments for each strategy with the group of second year students of English Philology Department of Uzbek State World Languages University, in number of 10. After each experiment there was a diagnostic test results of which were compared with other ones at the end of the research. The tables and formulas were used to illustrate and analyze the results of the survey. The Research Plan was coherently followed. The purpose of the research was successfully reached.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Statement of Intent 

          The topic of my Qualification Paper is Effectiveness of Reading Strategies for EFL Students of Pre-Intermediate Level. There are many reading strategies but nobody knows the most effective one. So, I decided to make my research on this issue in order to find the most effective strategy for reading comprehension.

          Firstly, I became interested in this problem when I had teaching practice last academic year. In the group, which I taught, there were many students that had problems with reading. There were some reasons, such as boring texts and bad instructional process, caused by the side of the teacher. And finding an answer to the question “What strategy to use for improving reading comprehension?” became one of the main tasks for me.

           This year I started my teaching practice with another group at our university and the problem I mentioned above arose again. I understood that to find an effective reading strategy is very big problem and I decided to make research on this issue in greater depth.

      I am planning to use different sources of information about different reading strategies. I am going to study these strategies by conducting experiments with the students of the English Philology Faculty of our university. Besides, I am going to use books and Internet resources.

      After I finish my research I will analyze my results and try to come to the best solution of the problem. So, I intend that my Qualification Paper will be useful for the future teachers. 
 
 

      LITERATURE REVIEW 

“To reach real scientific achievement the door to the world should be wide open. To be fully aware of these achievements is extremely important. That is why it is important to master foreign languages.”

(Islam Karimov) 

             Nowadays, the need to read, understand and use large amounts of information grows each day. There are many sources like books, newspapers and internet that provide people with different kind of news, and in order to keep up with the latest developments in any field there is a need of good reading comprehension skill. Since reading is a strategic process, poor readers have to learn how to read strategically. The researcher, with the purpose of discovering, made some scientific investigation, and found many interesting methods that are suggested by different authors. For instance, G.V. Rogova in her work “Methods of Teaching English” offered some interesting strategies for reading comprehension or E. N. Solovova, I. A. Gruzinskaya also mentioned about teaching reading in their works. And after looking through all these sources, the researcher chose six reading strategies that help struggling readers improve their comprehension: reciprocal teaching, think-aloud, questioning practices, retellings, vocabulary development activities, and peer-facilitated activities.  

Reciprocal Teaching:

    

          In the study of Flood and Lapp (1990) there is written: “Reciprocal teaching has been used to improve the comprehension of students who are able to decode, but have difficulties with the comprehension of text.  In reciprocal teaching, students learn specific strategies that enhance comprehension when they read new text.  The instruction of these strategies occurs during student-teacher dialogues.  During the reciprocal teaching process, students learn and practice four comprehension strategies through the reading of expository text.  These strategies include question generation, summarization, clarification, and prediction.”

      Klingner and Vaughn (1996) also writes about this strategy but he has found it to be an effective strategy to enhance comprehension in both students with learning disabilities and students who use English as a second language.  In their study they mention: “The effects of reciprocal teaching on leaning disabled ESL students were examined.  During the study, students were taught the four reciprocal teaching strategies.  Then students had the opportunity to model and practice each of the strategies in small groups, as a whole class, then apply them in independent activities.  Students also applied the strategies in either cooperative learning groups or cross-age tutoring experiences.”

            Here authors clearly showed and described their strategy, and it seems very effective and useful one. But teachers shouldn’t forget that the main role belongs to them, because this method requires careful instructions, explanations and approaches. The similar method is think- aloud that is written in “Strategies in Reading” by Rosenshine and Meister (1994). 

Think-Aloud:  

             Rosenshine and Meister (1994) say : “In reciprocal teaching, teachers model question-generation, summarization, clarification, and prediction using think-aloud practices.  During this process, teachers verbalize their thoughts while they read and put into practice various strategies.  When performing think-aloud, teachers show to students five techniques that should be used, when they read text.  Techniques include developing predictions and hypotheses, describing imagery, linking prior knowledge to new information in text, comprehension monitoring practices, and modeling strategies to correct errors in comprehension.”

      The researcher supposes that think-aloud makes students think about the meaning of the text, because while reading they have to think about predictions and hypothesis, try to imagine the whole picture of the content and just feel it. It can be an effective way to motivate students for detailed comprehension of the text. During reading, learners try to understand everything themselves without help or assistance of the teacher, that is why they have and feel the responsibility to monitor their own way of reading in order to comprehend and perform the material correctly. Moreover, this strategy is very interesting and involving for students, because they not only read the text but imagine it also. Rosenshine and Meister offer teachers to instruct students to write down their thoughts, feelings and opinions during the reading. They think that after reading students notes, teacher could know about strength and weaknesses of their learners and with the help of this to plan particular approach for improving understanding of the text. 

Questioning Practices:  

            Usually students who are good at reading try to predict the teacher’s questions about the text and prepare answers beforehand.  But struggling readers are not involved in self-questioning techniques.  They don't predict teachers' questions and do not think about the appropriate responses to questions.  Thus, students need to be taught how to generate and answer questions that will develop their comprehension of the text.

      Lehr and Osborn (1994) offer self-questioning strategies.  It consists of teaching students to focus on the important parts of a text by asking questions about the main idea and how to summarize what they have read.  It also instructs students in how to monitor their own comprehension by identifying parts of the text they don't understand through questioning.  Self-questioning practices can also instruct students in how to activate relevant prior knowledge.  This is done through appropriate self-questioning to assist with the understanding of a text.

      Question and answer relationships (QAR's) are one self-questioning practice.  There are three types of QAR's.  They are characterized as text explicit (TE), text implicit (TI), and script implicit (SI).  Answers to TE questions are stated right in the text.  TI questions require the reader to synthesize a variety of information from the text in order to arrive at the answer.  Answers to SI questions must come from the reader's prior knowledge. There are five steps to QAR activities.  They include assigning the text, generating the questions, providing the answers, identifying the QAR, and providing a justification for the QAR.  As students go through the steps, they learn how to classify types of questions. If questions are classified, students are taught how to go about answering them. 

            Another method of self-questioning is reciprocal questioning (ReQuest).  During ReQuest, the teacher and students take turns asking each other questions about a given text.  In this method of practice, teachers' questions and answers serve as models for the students.  This type of format allows teachers to provide students with feedback about their questions, as well as the strategies required to answer formulated questions.  This allows students to learn how to construct effective questions for independent reading (Helfeldt & Henk, 1990).”  

Retelling Practices:  

            It is very important to understand the information from text.  Retelling is can be one of technique teachers use. During the retelling, readers reflect and try to understand the meaning of the text.  It is a good tool to assess how well the reader comprehended the text.

            In a study by Gambrell and Koskinen (1991), “it was evaluated whether practice in retelling would affect the comprehension performance of proficient and less proficient readers.  The participants, who consisted of proficient and less proficient fourth graders, read narrative texts and developed tape-recorded verbal retellings of the stories over the course of four sessions.  In addition, students answered comprehension questions about the stories read after the first and fourth sessions. 

          Results from the study indicated that comprehension performance of both the proficient and less proficient students improved after only four sessions in both their retellings of the story and in their responses to the comprehension questions.  When examining the tape-recorded retellings, researchers found that students improved in both the quantity and quality of what they recalled from the text.  Students also improved in their ability to identify story structure elements, especially in the areas of theme and plot episodes.  Students were also able to make elaborations about the story that were not in the text but were directly related to the story line.  Thus, retelling is a useful instructional tool for both average and struggling readers.”  

Vocabulary Development Activities:  

         From Henderson (1996) “vocabulary acquisition is connected to comprehension, meaning making is increased when vocabulary is related to personal experiences”.  In order for this to occur, vocabulary development must be an interactive process.  Eight techniques used to assist with this include finding synonyms, use of brief descriptions, use of examples and non-examples, rephrasing, repetition, associations, and the use of a unique expression (Rosenbaum, 2001).  These techniques can be applied in the construction of word maps.

         “In constructing a word map, the student is to write the new word in the center of the map along with the sentence where the word was found.  The student uses the dictionary to write the definition of the word that supports the context of the sentence the word was found in.  Other information students should provide in the word map include a synonym and an antonym.  Students then write another form of the word.  This is done so that when they come across other words with similar roots, they have the prior knowledge necessary to understand the word.  The final parts of the word map include an example or expression that will help the student remember the definition, as well as an original sentence.”   

Peer-Facilitated Activities:  

      There also has been much research on the favorable effects of peer-mediated activities.  And this structure is described in Singer and Ferreira (1995).  “In peer-mediated activities, students work in small groups or in pairs on specific reading strategies.  With the support of the teacher, students model for each other correct responses, provide ongoing feedback, and monitor each other's progress.  Not only does this type of activity increase the academic time students are actively engaged, but it also improves students' interactions with learning.  This type of learning has been most beneficial for struggling students, as well as English as second language students since these students have difficulty learning in whole-class situations where they are often reluctant to orally participate.” 

Conclusion:  

      In conclusion, struggling readers need to be actively engaged in daily literacy activities if they are to be successful with reading.  Participating in activities such as reciprocal teaching, think aloud, and question generation, as well as vocabulary development activities are beneficial to struggling readers in that these strategies emphasize that students take ownership of and monitor their own comprehension.  Students are successful with these activities because they help students activate and develop the prior knowledge necessary for understanding text.  Without the appropriate background knowledge, students are not able to make meaning from text.

          Finally, motivating struggling readers is a great task.  Students need to have the opportunity to interact with high interest materials written at their language levels.  They also need the enjoyment from reading process. If the students are exposed to all of these items they will overcome their problem.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Research plan 
 

Statement of purpose 

The goal: to identify the most effective reading strategy that can help enhance students’ reading comprehension. 

The objectives:

• To prove the necessity and effectiveness of using specific reading strategies
• To evaluate second year students’ reading proficiency identifying their weaknesses
• To help learners to tackle their problems by developing methods of strategy instructions.

 

            The researcher stated the following research question:

Which of the following six reading strategies is the most effective: 1) Reciprocal Teaching, 2) Think- Aloud, 3) Questioning Practices, 4) Retelling Practices, 5) Vocabulary Development Activities, 6) Peer- Facilitated Activities. 

Method 

         The subjects:

         They were a group of second year students of Department of Uzbek State World Languages University in number of 10. All participants were of approximately the same age and their language proficiency level is generally pre-intermediate. Their native language is Uzbek. The group consisted of nine girls and a boy. The group was randomly selected and studied in October and December 2009. 

         The Materials 

1. Questionnaire (see Appendix1) – Identification of students’ attitude, expectations, needs before the experiments.
2. Diagnostic test 1 (see Appendix2) – Identification of students’ reading comprehension level.
3. Reading handouts (see Appendix3) – contained various reading articles, paragraphs and passages with different tasks and exercises.
4. Diagnostic tests (see Appendix4) – Identification of students’ reading comprehension level after the experiments.

Procedure  

The variables: 

      In this statistical study we use the following variables. Dependant variable is how particular reading strategy may influence learners’ reading comprehension proficiency. The Independent variable is the use of reading comprehension strategies themselves. The moderator variables are factors affecting the reading proficiency such as study abroad experience or gender and age characteristics. The control variable is eliminating students with study abroad experience. And the Intervening variable is the effectiveness of these reading strategies. 

      The specific steps in the experimental process: 

              The researcher had a teaching practice in English Philology Faculty in The State University of World Languages for 3 months, with a group of students. This group became great resource for her Qualification Paper. The researcher briefly told and explained students that they were supposed to participate in the set of experiments which will give them an opportunity to improve their reading skills, particularly comprehension. Students were asked to be very active and follow all instructions during the experiments. The researcher was planning to experiment each of the following strategies on learners (Reciprocal Teaching, Think- Aloud, Questioning Practices, Retelling Practices, Vocabulary Development Activities, Peer- Facilitated Activities) by using different techniques that support these strategies.