Adapting reading tasks in the textbook ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ to facilitate 10th graders’ reading comprehension

PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale of the study
In teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL), reading has always received a great deal of attention. According to Carrell [3; p.1] “for many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro-skills, particularly in English as a second or foreign language”; sharing the same point of view, Richard [11; p.15] shows that “Becoming an effective and fluent reader in another language has a number of important benefits for learner.” Undoubtedly, reading has become not only an important means to gain and enrich the students’ general knowledge but also an essential means to help them with their further study in future. Unfortunately, teaching and learning reading skill at high schools are still far from satisfactory for various reasons. Despite the teacher’s effort, students’ motivation is still low and reading lessons are said to be the boring one.
English language teaching materials in general and textbooks in particular play the role of tool, tutor, guide book. These roles are especially significant in EFL contexts including Vietnam, where textbooks are regarded as a staple in almost all EFL classes. Textbooks are useful source of language input and guidance for both teachers and learners. Despite the development of technology and the growth of computer-assisted language learning, it is unlikely that textbooks will disappear. In teaching and learning reading skill in particular, the role of textbooks is even more important than in teaching any other language skills or grammar and vocabulary because when reading, students have to pay much attention to the printed texts in order to understand them. However, available textbooks are not completely good for all teaching contexts. Accordingly, it is necessary for teachers to be well-equipped with assessment tools evaluate materials and more importantly, recommendation to adapt the materials to ensure that students are using the highest quality texts, and their language knowledge and skills are improved. Nevertheless, there has been little investigation into how to adapt material. 
The second reason for my choice is that there have been diverse opinions of both teachers and learners on the actual effectiveness of the reading tasks in the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’ by Hoang Van Van, which has been used to teach the 10th grade students at high schools. There have been arguments on both the potentials and limitations of the reading tasks in this textbook and the needs and references of teachers and learners who are using it. This school year, when working with the students in the mountainous areas, I have met a lot of difficulties in which the biggest challenges emerge from teaching reading comprehension. My colleagues in the school have also confronted a number of troubles, one of which was students’ lack of motivation to learn foreign language in general and reading skill in particular. Despite the teacher’s efforts, the problems are not better. For example, some students stated that they found reading lessons boring and did not feel they had learnt much in class. Therefore, the reading tasks need taking into more consideration by adapting to teach reading skill to the students. This is the reason why I myself focus on “Adapting reading tasks in the textbook ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ to facilitate 10th graders’ reading comprehension” with some common adapting techniques in the hope of increasing students’ motivation, arousing their interest, and thus enhancing their positive attitudes towards learning reading lessons.
1.2. Purpose of the study
This study aims at helping to improve reading comprehension for the 10th graders at Nhu Thanh secondary & high school in Thanh Hoa province by using some techniques of adapting the materials to facilitate and encourage them in learning reading lesson in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10”. In order to achieve the aims and objectives of the thesis, the following research questions were proposed:
(1) What are students’ attitudes towards the reading tasks in the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’?
(2) To what extent can the adaptation of the tasks help to facilitate the students’ reading comprehension?
1.3. Scope of the study
The study was carried out to two groups of the students of the class 10B5 at Nhu Thanh secondary & high school in Thanh Hoa Province, and it was conducted in 8 weeks of the second semester of the academic year.
1.4. Method of the study
This study using qualitative and quantitative research method aimed to determine whether reading task adaptation can enhance students’ reading comprehension skills or have a positive affect on the ability of students to make sense of what they read. The author used data collection instrument to gather information about the students involved, monitor the progress of the students when they are exposed to some task adapting during the lectures to determine the effectiveness of the material adaptation based on the students’ pre-test, post-test result 
The pre-tests were indispensible to assess the reading comprehension level before the intervention of the strategy and used as a baseline score. The post-tests were used to determine the effectiveness of the strategy used by the students during the experiment process by comparing the pre-test scores to the posttest scores taken at the end of the study. The students’ attitudes (shown in answered questionnaires) were also a reliable data for the teacher to conclude the hypothesis.
PART 2: DEVELOPMENT
2.1. Literature Review
2.1.1. Reading skill
Reading is known as a receptive process that connected the reader with the text, making comprehension. The text displays letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that express meaning. The reader manipulates knowledge, skills, and strategies to decide what that meaning is. Up to now reading has been described differently by lots of academics.
Harmer [6; p.153] shares his ideas “reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain. The eyes receive messages and the brain then has to work out the significance of these messages”. Clearly, ideas of reading have been diverse in exploiting words and expressions but they all focus on two actions: studying with eyes and comprehending with brains of which the latter is more significant. The most obvious thing in the latter is that the readers not only look at and understand the meaning of what is written but also read authors’ thinking.
 2.1.2. Reading comprehension 
 	Many studies confirm that the final goal of reading instruction is comprehension and one of the most important goals of skilled reading is decoding and understanding written text. However, the decoding and the ability to recognize words in texts are only the beginning stages of reading and reading comprehension. Grellet [5; p.3] states that “understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.” He also shows the examples in which a good reader will omit unnecessary information and find out what he or she is searching for. 
In another word, reading comprehension can be defined as “a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning. Reading becomes meaningless without comprehension since only reading comprehension can appreciate how much readers get the text. Therefore, how to aid students in having efficient reading comprehension methods is considered to be the most powerful task in teaching reading. 
For the student with limited English language proficiency, limited English vocabulary, and lack of strategy awareness, the printed page may pose overwhelming obstacles. When teachers understand the process nature of reading and have strategies available for use at each stage, the assignment of reading can be a more rewarding activity. When students are able to engage with text in an active and focused way, their time spent will reap benefits of greater content learning and enhanced literacy.
2.1.3. Defining task and task-based language teaching and learning
Applied since 1980s, task-based language teaching (TBLT) is a communicative approach to language instruction, using the successful completion of communicative tasks as its primary organizing principle. In task-based teaching, learners will upgrade their language competence by focusing on getting something done during using of the language. Moreover, learners are encouraged to use whatever language they already have in the process of completing a task. The use of tasks will also give a clear and purposeful context for the teaching and learning a language.
Obviously, task-based approach focuses on communication with real situation and employs tasks as the main means of teaching and learning. Many of definitions concentrate on different aspects of what constitutes a task. One of the most widely quoted definitions for task is offered by Long [7; p.89]. He refers to a task as “a piece of work undertaken for oneself or for others, freely or for some rewards. Thus examples of tasks include [] filling out a form, buying a pair of shoes, making an airline reservation, borrowing a library book, taking a driving test, typing a letter, [], making a hotel reservation, writing a check, finding a street destination and helping someone across the road. In other words, by “task” is meant the hundred and one things people do in everyday life, at work, at play, and in between”. Similarly, Nunan [10; p.10] describes “task” as a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form. 
In spite of a variety of interpretations, several common design features can be identified. These features include that all three definitions emphasize the importance of focus on meaning. This criterion supports the notion that conveying an intended meaning is the essence of language use.
2.1.4. Definition of adaptation
Tomlinson [12: p.xiv] stated that adaptation is “making changes to materials in order to improve them or to make them more suitable for a particular type of learner”. Relating to adaptation techniques, Madsen and Bowen [2; p. xi-ix] indicate that adaptation is the action of employing “one or more number of techniques: supplementing, editing, expanding, personalizing, simplifying, modernizing, localizing, or modifying cultural/ situational content”. However, McDonough and Shaw [8; p.9] emphasize the teacher’s role in bridging a gap between materials and learners “the teacher must satisfy the demand of the textbook, but in ways that will be fulfilling to those who learn from it”.
In summary, adaptation technique requires teachers to revise and adjust materials in order that they could be more practical and accessible to the teaching context.
2.1.5. Questionnaires
The survey questionnaire is a useful instrument and widely applied to data collection for the research. The attractions for using questionnaires have to be counted by the time taken to develop, pilot and refine. Moreover, this research methodology is carried out with low cost and less pressure. The analysis of answers to closed questions is relatively straightforward. However, the honesty of answers to questionnaires is impossible to be checked. The participants can choose the answers they think are the best not the thing they really do. In this study, the survey questionnaire was used to collect information about students’ attitudes towards reading skill, reading tasks in learning English. In order to avoid misunderstanding and ensure the accuracy of the data, the questionnaires should be written in Vietnamese.
2.1.6. Pre-test and Post-test
According to Cohen [4; p.5], tests are seen as “a powerful method of data collection”. So as to evaluate the changes of the students’ reading comprehension, the researcher need to build two reading tests: Pre-test and Post-test. These tests aim to discover how much improvement the students gain in reading whereby the effectiveness of the teaching is demonstrated. The topics and contents of the tests have to be relevant to students’ reading lessons. In preparing the tests, the researcher tried to guarantee the equal value in terms of vocabulary, content and difficult level. Each test consisted of one reading passage, which was followed by five multiple choice questions. The participants were required to read the passages to choose the best answer for each question. The time allowance for each test was fifteen minutes. To ensure that the tests could give a reliable result for the research questions, the researcher bore in mind such qualities of a good test as validity, reliability and practicality. The pre-test was delivered before the intervention and the post-test was conducted after the intervention.
2.2. Reasons for adapting tasks
Though textbook writers make great effort to meet the needs of the intended users, teachers still have to adapt the materials they are using if they want their teaching to be more interesting and effective. In fact, a course book can never be totally an effective tool for all teachers to follow without any adaptation since there might be intrinsic deficiencies such as linguistic inaccuracies, out-of-datedness, and lack of authenticity or lack of variety. 
Another reason for adaptation, as clarified by McDough and Shaw [8; p.85] is “to maximize the appropriateness of teaching materials in context, by changing some of internal characteristics of a course book to better suit our particular circumstances”. Teachers may choose any method to adapt the teaching materials in order to make them more relevant, accessible and useful to learners, which can stimulate learners’ motivation and improve learners’ achievement during learning process.
Relating to the role of motivation in language learning, McGrath [9; p.65] acknowledges that one of the practical reasons for adaptation is “to maintain learners’ interests by varying what might be a rather repetitive diet”. It is motivation that affects the extent of students’ involvement and performance in language learning.
2.3. Types of the adaptation exploited in the study
There is a wide range of adaptation techniques that teachers can apply when teaching reading with hope of helping students make maximum use of the textbook and learn as much the target language as possible. In the small context of the study, two types of adaptation have been exploited as follows:
* Simplifying: When simplifying, the teacher could be rewording instructions or text in order to make them more accessible to learners, or simplifying a complete activity to make it more manageable for learners and teachers.
* Reordering: When reordering, the teacher has decided that it makes more pedagogic sense to sequence activities differently. An example is beginning with a general discussion before looking at a reading passage rather than using the reading as a basis for discussion.
On the whole, adaptation is a very practical activity realized mainly by the teachers in order to make their work more relevant to the learners with whom they are daily contact. Moreover, it is a fact that no published textbook can possibly cater for every teacher, learner or teaching situation. Thus, each teacher has to take responsibility for textbook adaptation so as to ensure an optical match between textbooks and the particular teaching context. Finally, it is advisable that teacher should create more enjoyable and easier lessons to make language teaching process more effective.
2.4. Research context
2.4.1. Setting and Participants:
This study was conducted in 8 weeks from January 2019 to April 2019 in class 10B5 at Nhu Thanh secondary & high school in mountainous area of Thanh Hoa province.
Forty 10th graders involved in the study. They mainly come from the mountainous villages in the region. In general, they had learnt English for over 4 years. However, their proficiency is not satisfactory enough, and their learning style is quite passive. In addition, they hardly acquired any effective skills in reading a short reading text. In their opinion, learning English means getting grammar and structures with common lexical resources. As a result, they were almost beginners in reading comprehension as a high school student. 
2.4.2. The textbook: 
The design of the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’ is based on task-based approach with 16 units and 6 Test Yourself parts. There are five parts in each unit arranged as follows: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing, and Language Focus. The reading passages in this book are about 200 words in length. It is intended to provide students with through coverage of basic grammatical and lexical items and language skill. There are six topics throughout the curriculum such as: Personal Information, Education, Community, Nature, Recreation, and People and Places. All the reading lessons in the textbook follow up three stages: before you read, while you read, and after you read. The reading tasks are designed based on three reading activities: pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading tasks. These tasks are in plenty of forms including: question-answer, multiple-choice, blank filling, word predicting, etc. However, with the period of 45 minutes, the reading texts and reading tasks are quite long, complicated and difficult to students at Nhu Thanh secondary & high school.
2.4.3. The reality of teaching and learning reading skill at Nhu Thanh secondary & high school.
As mentioned above, the research is conducted at Nhu Thanh secondary & high school, which is located in Thanh Hoa Province. Like other high schools, English is one of the compulsory subjects in curriculum, and it is taught three times a week with 45 minutes for each lesson. However, there is no language laboratory at school, teachers who teach English are only equipped cassette players for listening lesson.
After one term studying at my school, tremendous difficulties arose with both teachers and students in teaching and learning lessons. In term of reading skills, the students had been accustomed to basic reading skills like reading a short sentence, short passage with a small range of common vocabulary. To them, therefore, reading comprehension is nearly hopeless.
2.5. Stages of the study
Step 1: Initiation
During the first term of the school year, I recognized that students felt tired of reading lessons; some did not want to participate in reading activities; some did not feel satisfied with the reading tasks; and a few of them did not understand the lessons at all. These problems resulted in students’ low achievement and demotivation in doing reading tests in class. What should be done to solve these problems?
Step 2: Investigation
To understand more about the situation, I had informal chats with the students in breaks to discover their problems. Moreover, the exchange with colleagues through informal talks was employed.
The students were demotivated because some reading tasks in the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’ were unsuitable to their level. They could not complete the reading tasks in order to understand the information conveyed in reading texts. Some students shared that reading skill was the most boring and stressful for them.
The survey questionnaire (appendix 1A, 1B) was given to one hundred 10th grade students, which aims at confirming the hypothesis that students’ troubles are related to reading tasks in the textbook.
To access students’ achievement before treatment, a pre-test (appendix 2) was given to two groups of students. The purpose of the test was to help the author discover students’ reading comprehension level at that moment.
Step 3: Intervention
Adapting reading tasks is believed to be an appropriate method which helps the students in class 10B5 improve their performance in reading. And the plan of action was condu