Some ways to redesign the activities in teaching reading comprehension of the 12th English at Quang Xuong 1 High School

PART I: 	INTRODUCTION 
REASON FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC:
	Nowadays, English plays an integral part in our society. It appears as a tool, a means of communication. It helps people in different cultures, with different languages can understand one another. Not only is English an essential means in international communication but it is also a job which can help us get a lot of money. Estimates vary about how many people speak English worldwide but some believe English-speakers are likely to number in the billions. English crosses cultures, countries and industries and is often used as a ‘common tongue’ if neither person is a native speaker. This means teaching people English can be truly rewarding – because students of English have so many new opportunities and doors open to them thanks to their skills. With its such high roles, English now becomes the compulsory subject in the National Curriculum and is the obligatory subject in all examinations in Viet Nam.
With the changes in the National Exam for Upper Secondary Education these recent years, reading comprehension covers 50 % of total content of the exam paper. It includes 3 small parts: gap filling, reading comprehension 1, reading comprehension 2. The content and topics of reading tasks in the exam mostly focus on those students learn in reading passage – English 12. The ability in doing these reading tasks depends on what they get and how they learn from English 12 – Reading comprehension.
In National Curriculum for English – upper secondary education, 7- year- period, especially in grade 12, students face up to a huge amount of information, knowledge and skills. For the teachers ourselves, we meet a lot of difficulties in teaching a great amount of knowledge, whichever is also important and can appear in a test. The topics in Reading text – English 12 spread over a large number of fields such as cultures, history, science whereas some teachers still lack general knowledge in some fields as well as being short of material sources to get to know. As a result, we get barriers in leading the lesson (Warm – up). 
The time of a period for a class is also a problem, as it is too short, while there are too many things for the teacher to convey. Besides, the number of students in each class is too high, which makes it difficult to cover all of them in shortly 45 – minute period. That’s why some students during the lesson can make sense of the knowledge teacher is trying to convey. In total, the difficulties we may get in the process of teaching Reading skill can be:
Too many students in the class (often over 40 per class)
Different levels among students.
Some reading texts are too long, or there are so many new words, new information, which make it difficult for teacher to solve the whole lesson.
Limited time to make some opened –ended questions à can not exploit the ability of thinking among students.
Some questions and pictures have little relevance to the topic of the lesson. Besides, some of them are out of date.
Students themselves in the reading period have a lot of difficulties as well:
Try to read all words appearing in the passage and translate into Vietnamese, while there are a lot of new words.
Focus too much on the meaning of individual words, forget the main ideas.
Do not have the skill of totalizing the main points of a reading passage.
General knowledge is limited.
Unaware of the importance of learning English. Lack of the motivation in studying. Do not really be active, especially those from country like Quang Xuong. 
In order to overcome some of the problems above, I strongly recommend some redesigns specially for teaching reading comprehension in English 12, mostly focus on some changes in the tasks in each period, so that I can help my students get better result in learning reading comprehension. My theme “ Some ways to redesign the activities in teaching reading comprehension of the 12th English at Quang Xuong 1 High School” aims at helping students easily do the tasks they are given in each lesson, and better understand the whole reading passage. Consequently, they can improve their skill in reading comprehension. I want to use this theme for further study and then share with other colleagues, so that in some extend, helping them as a source of reference material in their teaching career.
 AIMS OF THE STUDY:
In this paper, I will discuss briefly the tenets of reading comprehension, the cognitive tasks involved in reading as well as the various activities teachers use in teaching reading comprehension. By redesigning some activities for tasks in textbook – English 12, teacher can help students approach the reading skill effectively, according to the process: PPP
Presentation à Practice à Production
If this is done well, learners can build their language competence, progress in their reading ability, become more independent in their studies, acquire cultural knowledge, and develop confidence and motivation to carry on learning.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY:
Reading texts in Textbook English 12 with students at Quang Xuong 1 High school.
METHODS OF STUDY:
My work bases on some basic methods below: 
experience à observing à collecting à consulting à experimenting.
Getting experiences through the practical teaching of myself
Observing the facts and getting information: Through students’ relating theory achievement as well as their solving relating exercises.
Collecting results through some surveys. 
Studying references, materials relating. Consulting some colleagues.
Experiment: Confirming the correct answers from the mistakes students make.
PART II: DEVELOPMENTS
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND:
My own teaching experiences during some years in high school.
The basic background of knowledge about the reading comprehension skill.
The consultation of some reference materials about reading comprehension.
The idea contribution from the colleagues.
The common difficulties and mistakes learners often get during their learning.
Hedge (2003) states that any reading component of an English language course may include a set of learning goals for
The ability to read a wide range of texts in English. This is the long- range goal most teachers seek to develop through independent readers outside classroom.
building a knowledge of language which will facilitate reading ability 
 building schematic knowledge. 
 the ability to adapt the reading style according to reading purpose (i.e. skimming, scanning) 
developing an awareness of the structure of written texts in English 
THE ACTUAL SITUATION:
Different levels and intellectual abilities of learners are also real hurdle, which make most teachers find difficult in applying methods in imparting knowledge. This inspires us ceaselessly to try to look for solutions.
Besides, some teachers find it hard to teach some reading contents that refer to such field they themselves are not familiar.
THEORY:
. DESCRIPTION OF THE SUBJECT: 
Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and to integrate it with what the reader already knows. Fundamental skills required in efficient reading comprehension are knowing meaning of words, ability to understand meaning of a word from discourse context, ability to follow organization of passage and to identify antecedents and references in it, ability to draw inferences from a passage about its contents, ability to identify the main thought of a passage, ability to answer questions in a passage, ability to recognize the literary devices or propositional structures used in a passage and determine its tone, to understand the situational mood (agents, objects, temporal and spatial reference points, casual and intentional inflections, etc.) conveyed for assertions, questioning, commanding, refraining etc. and finally ability to determine writer's purpose, intent and point of view, and draw inferences about the writer (discourse-semantic).
To help students with their reading comprehension skill, firstly, the teacher needs to help them understand and identify clearly which types of reading skill they are going to deal with. 
According to the way of reading, there are two types:
+ Aloud reading: to check the phonetics and its relating terms.
+ Silent reading: to check the speed, the understanding towards the material.
According to the purpose, reading activity is divided into many types:
+ Reading for pleasure
+ Scanning
+ Skimming
+ Reading for further study.
+ Reading for analysis
. DATA COLLECTION AND PROCEDURE:
. Data collection:
The reading passages in textbook often aims at helping students not only get to know information, broaden their knowledge in some specific fields, enrich their vocabularies but also help them to practice reading skill, so that they can do well in any reading materials. In a reading lesson, teacher does not provide the whole content. It’s the students who try to understand what the whole reading passage talks about and how to solve the tasks that relate. The teacher must be a guider, a helper who solve any problems raising during the lesson.
Like teaching other skills of language, teaching reading skill method includes many skills and is done through many techniques. In general education, most of the reading passages are designed for intensive and extensive reading. In order to get success in approaching the reading passage, both teacher and students must have an aim clearly for it: 
What is the aim of the reading lesson
Types of reading skill can be chosen
How to approach the content of the lesson
3.2.2. Procedure:
Contemporary reading tasks, unlike the traditional materials, involve three phase procedures: pre-, while-, and post- reading stages. In each stage, teacher must organize some activities in order to solve the duties. 
Pre – reading activities:
The pre-reading stage helps in activating the relevant schema. Most teachers tend to neglect the pre-reading procedure claiming that there is not enough time. In fact, pre-reading activities motivate students before the actual reading takes place. For example, teachers can ask students questions that arouse their interest while previewing the text. Drucker (2003) suggests the following procedure teachers can take before reading a text:
“relate the passage students are going to read to something that is familiar to them. Next, provide a brief discussion question that will engage the students and, after that, provide an overview of the section they are about to read. Name the selection, introduce the characters, and describe the plot (up to, but not including, the climax). Last, direct the students to read the story and look for particular information.”
Similarly, Abraham (2002) states that an interactive approach “demands that the teachers activate the students’ schema” during the pre-reading phase by helping “students recognize the knowledge that they already have about the topic of a text” (p. 6), i.e. through discussion of titles, subheadings, photographs, identifying text structure, previewing, etc. Such activities are called “pre-reading strategies”. As Orasanu (1986) explicates the notion of “schema” (or background knowledge) which “ can be thought of as a framework containing slots to be filled by incoming text information. For example, if a reader is presented with a text about going on vacation, he or she would likely have a slot in the vacation schema for packing a suitcase. Text statements about folding clothes or carrying bags could then fill the slot. If a reader did not have a vacation schema with a "suitcase-packing slot," the information about clothes and bags might not be readily understood.”
Pre – reading activities include the activities and techniques that gain the targets:
Arouse interest
Set up the context
Create reason for reading
Pre-teach structures, new words
Introduce briefly the topic, content
Eliciting, guiding questions
Predict the context
Give expectation
While – reading activities: 
The aim of while-reading stage (or interactive process) is to develop students’ ability in tackling texts by developing their linguistic and schematic knowledge. This phase is the most important one because it is the most active one among the three stages. Therefore, Shahidullah (1995; 1996) suggests the following while-reading activities : 
1. Guessing meaning from context, 
2. Analyzing sentences, 
3. Surveying text structure, 
4. Extracting specific information, 
5. Getting detailed information, 
6. Answering pre-set questions, 
 7. Matching text with pictures diagrams etc.,
This stage is to check students whether they understand the lesson or not through some tasks, which are done during the reading activity or after that. The tasks in this stage are various: 
Choose the sentence A,B, or C that is nearest meaning to the given sentence.
Answer the questions.
Explain the meaning of the italicized words/ phrases in the following sentences.
Give Vietnamese equivalents to the following words/ phrases.
Decide whether the following statements are true(T) or false(F).
 Choose the best title for the passage.
Choose A, B, C, or D to complete the following sentences about the reading passage.
Scan the passage and complete each of following sentences.
Post – reading activities:
After finishing the tasks, the teacher can check up students on whether they understand the whole reading passage, whether they can apply what they have just read to the new task
Haller (2000, p. 21-24) modeled a number of school-based post-reading activities which enhance learning comprehension through the use of matching exercises, cloze exercises, cut-up sentences, and comprehension questions. For the cloze activity, the teacher puts blanks in the story in place of some of the words, usually every fifth word but not the first or the last words in the text. A cut-up sentence activity uses sentences from the given text and helps learners to gain confidence by manipulating the text in various ways. The use of lines in matching can be sometimes confusing for beginners. Haller proposes the use of “paper strips” at the beginning where a student is given the strips and asked to match for example a name with its corresponding activity. Later students can work in pairs as they understand the concept of matching and, finally, the teacher can introduce matching through lines. For extra practice students can copy their matching word slips onto another sheet of paper.
The activities in this stage include: 
+ Summarize the passage, based on the years: 1967, 1998,
+ Summarized the reading passage by writing ONE sentence for each paragraph.
+ Fill in each space of the following paragraph with a suitable word.
+ Make a comparison between
+ Discuss the advantages of.
+ Scan the passage and make brief notes.
+ Discuss the questions.
3.3. DATA ANALYSIC
3.3.1.Learners’ Analysis 
 Question one: What is your purpose from reading?
Most of learners (52%) said that their purpose from reading is to enrich their general knowledge, while (20%) state that their objective from reading is to enlarge their vocabulary knowledge, the same percentage is the answer of reading for the sake of answering needs related to their studies, while only (8%) claim that they read for pleasure. For the purpose of knowing the kinds of materials that learners’ best prefer this question was asked. 
Question two: what will you do if you do not understand when reading? 
( 32%) of the informants state that when they read and do not understand they try to translate to their mother tongue which is Arabic, while (32%) answered that they carry on reading without understanding, and (24%) of the participants said that they use the dictionary. Only (13%) of them stop reading when they do not understand the reading materials at hand. 
Some of the participants add that they ask the teacher or their classmates whenever they come across some ambiguity in the text. 
Question three: What are the difficulties that you face when reading? 
 Some informants (48%) agree that when they often read they have problems with ambiguous words and that they cannot understand the whole text. while (20%) of them claim that they face problems with words that seem to be confusing sometimes, like some deceptive words. Just (16%) of the informants answer with the problems of reading aloud in the classroom, some of them say that while they are reading loudly some of their classmates laugh at them when they cannot read perfectly, and for this reason they consider reading aloud as an obstacle. As for difficulties of pronunciation, it was the same percentage (16%). 
Question four: What are the reasons behind reading difficulties? 
When asked about the main reasons behind reading problems, (40%) of learners agree that they do not have the habit to read, while (24%) of them considered that the main reason behind their reading problems is due to the lack of time and (20%) of the answer relate reading difficulty to the kind of texts that they read. Lastly, the remaining (16%) agree on the difficulty of the reading skill itself.
3.3.2. Conclusion 
The present practical part provides a practical analysis case study that was done both qualitatively and quantitatively by using two research tools. In fact, from the data analysis phase, the finding showed that 12th grade learners cannot read fluently, because they face a number of difficulties in reading comprehension. The results reveal that teachers related the learners’ reading comprehension achievement mainly to their lack of reading habit; learners do not often read and this is due to the globalization age and under the use of Information and Communication Technologies, that is why the following writing seeks to present some suggestions and solutions in order to expand the learners’ vocabulary knowledge, and thus to lead to a better comprehension while reading. 4. SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ ABILITIES IN READING COMPREHENSION SKILL:
Before - you - read activities:
These tasks are important for both teachers and learners, because they prepare students for the text they are going to read. In this respect, Abraham (2002) maintains that an interactive approach demands that the teachers should activate the students’ schemata during the pre-reading phase by helping them recognize their prior knowledge about the topic of the text. From my own experience, I suggest some pre-reading activities, which are mostly used to arouse students’ own interests and take advantage of their own knowledge of the topic. 
Example 1: 	Unit 1: HOME LIFE – Part A: READING
By the end of the lessons, Students will be able to talk about home life and discuss the role of each member in the family.
Instead of using questions in textbook, the teacher gives students handout, with the following model:
Activities
Mother
Father
You
Others
Wash the dishes
Wash the clothes
Clean the house
Buy food for the family
Prepare the breakfast for the family
Cook dinner 
mend things around the house
Take out the garbage
.
This change of task helps students know exactly what they are going to deal with in the reading text, rather than try to answer the questions that they don’t really know how to do.
Example 2: 	Unit 6: FUTURE JOBS – Part A: READING
By the end of the lesson, students can get for themselves some tips to help them have a successful interview for a job in the future.
The hand-out activity helps students have an overlook of what they are going to deal with, so that they can prepare the background knowledge, and approach the reading text more easily after that.
Handout: Match a question in column A with an appropriate answer in column B:
Questions
Answers
1. What are you going to do after finishing university?
a. At the job center I can find out the information about jobs/ vacancy.
2. Where can you find out the information about jobs?
b. I have to bri