Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm Using Extensive Reading to improve teaching reading skill for the 11th graders at a high school

 PART I: INTRODUCTION 
 1. 1. Rationale of the study 
 In recent years, English has become a language for global communication and 
has been considered as an effective means of access to scientific and technological 
development. To meet these requirements, English has been widely taught almost 
everywhere in Vietnam, not only at all colleges and universities, but also at almost 
every senior high schools, and English is seen a compulsory subject. 
 In the process of teaching and learning English as a foreign language, 
reading is regarded as the most significant skill for students to gain the knowledge; 
Alan contends that “Reading is the most important skill a child can develop, learning 
to read is an important skill every child must develop to be successful in school” 
(2011:37). In order to develop reading skill, students have to learn strategies to 
enhance their vocabulary, their speed of reading, improve their motivation, attitude 
and proficiency. 
 However, due to some objective and subjective reasons, teaching and 
learning English in general and teaching and learning reading in particular does not 
come up to the study aims. Although teachers always make great effort to provide 
students with many opportunities to learn and develop their communicative skills, 
how to teach and learn reading effectively is still a big challenge to both teachers 
and students at many high schools. 
 As the teachers of foreign language of a high school, we realize that 
students‟ reading skill is limited which affects the acquisition of their four language 
skills. It is not easy for teachers to motivate students to take part in the activities of 
reading skill comfortably in reading lessons. Most of them often feel hesitant and 
anxious when presenting before class. They do not pay more to their attention to 
their reading skill. They usually keep silent in reading lessons or they often use 
mother tongue instead speaking English. Moreover, it is also not enough time for 
students to complete all tasks in reading activities and the teacher may almost have 
not enough time for the lectures while students are passive through activities. 
 The authors, therefore, carried out an extensive reading to improve the 
students‟ reading learning. This study aims to investigate the effects of extensive 
reading and their attitudes towards the extensive reading. 
 Our teaching experience is titled: “Using Extensive Reading to improve 
teaching reading skill for the 11th graders at a high school. ” 
 1.2. The aims of the study: 
 The study was conducted in order to improve students’ reading through 
Extensive Reading at a high school and to make them interesting, exciting and active 
in learning and practicing their English, especially reading skill by using Extensive 
 1 PART II: CONTENTS 
 2. 1.THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 
 2.1.1. Nature of reading 
 2.1.1.1. Definitions of reading 
 Reading, in general, is a natural and common habit in human life and in 
particular, is one of the four main language skills for the foreign language learners. 
In teaching reading, it is very important for teachers to understand what reading is. 
For teachers of foreign languages, understanding the nature of reading has much 
influence on what they will teach in a language classroom, especially in reading 
lessons. Therefore, many theorists have studied and given definitions of reading. 
Their definitions reflect different points of view. 
 The earliest definition of reading can be tracked back to Huey (1908). Huey 
viewed reading as gathering or choosing from what was written, suggesting that 
constant feeling of values which goes on in all effective reading. Huey was 
concerned with the process used to gained information from printed page and 
focused particularly on the ideas represented in printed form and the means by 
which the mind takes note of them. Thorndike (1917: 323 - 332) characterized 
reading as reasoning and assumed that it was an active process related to problem 
solving. Huey and Thorndike both reflect the belief that reading requires both 
visual and non-visual information, which supports recent findings that prior 
knowledge about experience involving language - the syntactic, semantic, and 
orthographic elements used to create text - is stored in the reader's mind, enabling 
them to predict meaning. 
 Reading can be seen as "a process whereby one looks at and understands 
what has been written" (Williams, E., 1986:2). It is noted that reading 8 aloud 
without understanding does not count reading. However, it does not mean that a 
reader needs to understand everything in a text as well as to look at all written 
symbols that appear on the page. Simply, reading means "reading and 
understanding" (Ur, P. 1996: 138). Harmer J (1991: 190) seems to be interested in 
the notion of reading. He says "reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and 
the brain. The eyes receive message and the brain then has to work out the 
significance of these message". Moreover, Rubin, J. and Thompson, I. (1982:91) 
offer another definition of reading as follow: "Reading is an active information-
seeking process in which readers relate information in the text to what they already 
know". From this point of view, the reader's knowledge of the language and 
knowledge of the world is of important to their reading success. 
 In the book "Becoming an effective reading teacher" (1941) Robinson and 
Good write "Reading comprehension is best described as an understanding of the 
printed page based on the individual's unique background of experience. Reading 
 3 as text-driven process in which the reader plays a relatively passive role in 
performing two tasks of reading process; namely decoding and comprehending. 
From this point of view, the process of constructing the text from small units 
becomes so automatic that the reader is not aware of how it operates. 
 In contrast, top-down theory argues that reader is at the heart of the reading 
process, and that he or she brings knowledge, past experience, language intuitions, 
expectation, assumptions and questions to the text in order to confirm their 
predictions. The top-down school of reading also argues that reader fit the text into 
knowledge he or she already possess then checks back when new or unexpected 
information appears. b) The interactive model Stannovich, K. (1980, in Nunan, D., 
1991) 
 b) The interactive model 
 Stannovich, K. (1980, in Nunan, D., 1991) shows the major deficiency of the 
bottom-up model that it assumes the initiation of higher-level processes, such as 
use of background knowledge, must wait lower level decoding processes. On the 
other hand, the top-down model does not allow lower level processes to direct 
higher-level ones. He claims that the interactive model is the best description of 
reading process because it deals with the shortcomings inherent in bottom-up and 
top-down model. 
 The interactive theorists argue that both top-down and bottom-up processes 
are occurring either alternatively or at the same time. It is 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 culturally shaped belief about the reading. 
 c) Reasons for reading 
 It is clear that people generally read when they have a reason for reading, i.e. 
they have need of some kind that can be satisfied through reading. Wallace, 10 C. 
(1992) mentions three personal reason for reading, namely reading for survival, 
reading to learn and reading for pleasure. 
 - Reading for survival: reading in response to the living environment is 
called reading for survival. Survival reading is to serve immediate needs or wishes, 
for example, reading forms, bills, official notices, directions, bus and train tables, 
etc. 
 - Reading to learn: It is nearly almost everyone has to learn to read because 
learners "read to learn". The point of teaching reading curriculum is partly to 
develop the ability to learn from books. Although there are many other reasons for 
reading but reading to learn closely relates to the reader's general intellectual 
growth that is a crucially important skill to acquire. 
 5 "Intensive reading means reading short text to extract specific information. 
Intensive reading is also called study reading so it is very significant for foreign 
language learning in EFL classroom. While extensive reading aims at maintaining 
interest and does not require the help of the teacher, this "study reading" involves 
the close study of a text under the close guidance 13 of the teacher. The students 
are expected to "arrive at a profound detailed understanding of the text, not only of 
what it means, but also of how the meaning is produced" (Nutall, 1989, p.23) In 
short, types of reading are not mutually. For instance, the readers often skim 
through the passages to see what they are about before deciding whether it is worth 
scanning a particular paragraph for the information they are looking for. Similarly, 
intensive and extensive reading are not contrastive but complementary in terms of 
an important and necessary means for students not only to gain knowledge but also 
to develop other language skills. 
 2.1.2 Extensive reading 
 2.1.2.1 Definitions of extensive reading 
 Extensive reading (ER) has been defined in various ways by educators, 
researchers, and reading specialists. The first person to apply the term “extensive 
reading" in foreign language (FL) or second language (L2) pedagogy (Louis 1969 
cited in Day and Barmford 1998: 5) was Harold Palmer (1949) one of the most 
prominent applied linguists in British twentieth-century language teaching, who 
defines the extensive reading as rapidly reading book after book where the reader's 
attention should be on the meaning, not the language of the text. He chose the term 
"extensive reading" to distinguish it from intensive reading (IE) which often refers 
to the careful reading (or translation) of shorter, more difficult foreign language 
texts with the goal of complete and detailed understanding and skills practice such 
as distinguishing the main idea of the text from the detail, finding pronoun 
referents, or guessing the meaning of unknown words (Bamford and Day, 1997) . 
 The relevant definition of extensive reading on basis of theory and practice 
which was developed from the earliest definition stated above is an approach to 
learning to read a second language, ER may be done in and out of the classroom. 
Outside the classroom, extensive reading is encouraged by 14 allowing students to 
borrow books to take home and read. In the classroom, it requires a period of time, 
at least 15 minutes or so to be set aside for sustained silent reading, which is for 
students - and perhaps the teacher as well - to read individually anything they wish 
to. 
 (Day and Bamford 1997:7) Aebersold, J. A., & Field, M. L. (1997) also 
assert that extensive reading is reading large amounts of material to get an overall 
understanding while focusing on the meaning of the text than the meaning of 
individual words or sentences. As an approach to teaching reading, it may be 
thought of in terms of purpose or outcome. Additionally, an ER approach 
introduces students to the dynamics of reading as it is done in real life by including 
 7 not absolute number of hours, pages or words, it depends on teacher and student 
perceptions. The amount of extensive reading will y according to type of 16 
program, level and other variables. 
 By focusing ont general comprehension, this procedure reduces both teacher 
demands on the student and student demands on the text to attain the objectives of 
fluency and speed as well as comprehension. Broughton et al.'s comment that 
extensive reading must imply a "relatively low degree of understanding" (1978, 
cited in Susser and Robb, 1990 ) must be taken in context: we want students to 
achieve a degree of understanding sufficient for pleasure reading. If the student 
finds the book too difficult to enjoy, the extensive reading procedure requires that 
the book be changed, and not that the student be made to study it more closely. The 
level of global understanding required varies with the student's language 
proficiency, the nature of the text, and other factors. 
 Pleasure may seem dubious, because, after all, the reading is an assignment, 
and most of us do not take pleasure in assignments. However, pleasure, like 
quantity, is relative. The procedure assumes that students will enjoy reading books 
that they have chosen on topics of interest to them more than they will enjoy 
assigned readings from a reader. If they have chosen correctly, the book should be 
easy to read for general understanding. Any EFL reading teacher can supply 
anecdotal counter-evidence. Further, even learners who are far from fluent derive 
pleasure from the very experience of reading a book in a foreign language. 
Students in extensive reading courses regularly comment on their joy at having 
finished whole books in the target language. 
 Having some ideas and aspects of extensive reading, the following section 
will present some its benefits in EFL context. 
 2.1.2.2 The benefits of extensive reading in foreign language learning 
 A large amount of research has been conducted over the last 20 years in 
order to reveal its benefits in different aspects of language learning in EFL/ ESL 
context. According to Nutall, "The best way to improve your knowledge of a 
foreign language is to go and live among its speakers. The next best way is to 17 
read extensively in it" (Nutall, 1982) .Therefore, reading extensively is the best 
way for EFL students to improve their English. 
 ER has been proved a large number of benefits to different aspects of 
learning. Grabe & Stoller (2002) reviewed eight benefits of ER on learners’ 
reading: ER helps readers develop automatic word recognition, a large recognition 
vocabulary, general background knowledge, and reading proficiency. It also has 
positive effects on readers' motivation to read, their learning and using of 
strategies, their ability to "read to learn", and their continuous learning on their 
own when instruction is absent. 
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