an investigation of the reading strategies used … · strategi pembacaan menunjukkan proses...

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE READING STRATEGIES USED BY TESL

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS WHEN COMPREHENDING A LITERARY

TEXT

SITI SABARIAH BINTI ALI

Laporan Projek Ini Dikemukakan Sebagai Memenuhi

Sebahagian Daripada Syarat Penganugerahan Ijazah

Sarjana Muda Sains Serta Pendidikan (TESL)

Fakulti Pendidikan

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

2003

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Specially Dedicated to

My beloved parents

Ali bin Mohamed

&

Jamilliah binti Ismail

because your faith in me is never ending

My better half

Mohd. Fazli bin Hj. Salikan

because knowing you is the best thing that ever happen in my life

Myself

for the high-spirit in successfully going through the challenging time

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First of all, I would like to praise and thank Allah s.w.t for blessing and

guiding me all the way in completing this thesis. I would like to express my heartiest

gratitude and appreciation to my supervisor, Puan Zanariah bte Salleh for her patience,

guidance and encouragement in helping me to complete this thesis. Without her helps

this thesis might not have been completed. I would also like to thank my course mates

for their support and advice. Most of all, I thank them for being ever-helpful and

cooperative, especially during the interview session. I also appreciate them for being

there as my good friends and listener during my hardest time. A special thanks to my

parents, siblings and my better half who have always been there from the beginning

until now. Thank you for being so caring and so understanding.

v

ABSTRACT

“Reading strategies indicate how readers conceive a task, what textual cues

they attend to, how they make sense of what they read and what they do when they do

not understand when they read” (Block 1986). In order to read effectively, one should

have an appropriate reading strategy. These strategies can help the reader understand

the text clearly. This research was done in order to investigate the reading strategies

used by TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) undergraduate students when

comprehending a literary text. It also finds out on what problems students usually

faced when reading a literary text. Besides that, this research tries to see the reading

strategies used by good, average and poor readers. The subjects for this study involved

six UTM TESL undergraduate students who were from a mixed language ability based

on their SPM English paper results (A1–C6). The think-aloud technique and interview

were used as the instruments for this study. The analysis of the data for this study was

done by coding the subjects’ reading protocols; where each strategy was assigned to a

category. The findings of this study show that different people use different strategies

in their reading. Besides that, good readers used a lot of strategies but the occurrences

of one strategy at a time is not as frequent as to the average and poor readers From this

study, the problems usually faced by the students during reading a literary text have

been identified, such as semantic problems.

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ABSTRAK

Strategi pembacaan menunjukkan proses pembaca memahami tugasan, tanda-

tanda tekstual yg digunakan, bagaimana mereka memahami apa yang dibaca dan apa

yang dilakukan apabila mereka tidak memahami apa yang dibaca. Sekiranya ingin

membaca secara efektif, seseorang itu harus mempunyai strategi pembacaan yang

sesuai. Strategi ini dapat membantu pembaca untuk memahami teks dengan jelas.

Kajian ini dilaksanakan adalah untuk menyelidik strategi pembacaan yang digunakan

oleh pelajar Sarjana Muda Sains serta Pendidikan (TESL) semasa memahami teks

kesusateraan Bahasa Inggeris. Ia juga mengenal pasti masalah-masalah yang sering

dihadapi oleh pelajar-pelajar semasa membaca teks kesusasteraan Bahasa Inggeris. Di

samping itu, kajian ini cuba melihat perbezaan strategi pembacaan yang digunakan

oleh pembaca baik, pembaca sederhana dan pembaca yang lemah. Subjek yang dipilih

bagi kajian ini terdiri daripada 6 pelajar TESL, UTM yang mempunyai tahap

kebolehan bahasa Inggeris yang pelbagai berdasarkan keputusan Bahasa Inggeris

mereka dalam peperiksaan SPM (A1- C6). Teknik menterjemahkan pemikiran secara

verbal dan temuramah digunakan sebagai instrumen kajian ini. Data yang diperolehi

dianalisis dengan menulis protokol.pembacaan subjek; di mana setiap strategi

diletakkan mengikut kategori. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan bahawa setiap orang

mempunyai strategi pembacaan yang berbeza. Di samping itu, pembaca yang baik

menggunakan pelbagai strategi tanpa berulang-kali berbanding dengan pembaca

sederhana dan lemah. Melalui kajian ini juga, masalah-masalah yang sering dihadapi

oleh pelajar ketika membaca teks kesusasteraan Bahasa Inggeris telah dikenalpasti.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER CONTENTS PAGE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iv

ABSTRACT v

ABSTRAK vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

LIST OF TABLES xi

LIST OF APPENDICES xii

ONE INTRODUCTION

1.0 Introduction 1

1.1 Background of The Study 2

1.2 Statement of the Problem 3

1.3 Purpose of the Study 4

1.4 Research Questions 5

1.5 Importance of The Study 5

1.6 Scope of the Study 7

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1.7 Limitations of the Study 7

1.8 Definitions of Terminology and 8

Abbreviation Used

TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 The Nature of Reading 10

2.1 Reading Strategies 14

2.2 The Content Schemata or 15

Background Knowledge

2.3 The Thinking-Aloud Technique 16

2.4 Research Related to the Study 17

THREE METHODOLOGY

3.0 Introduction 21

3.1 Research Design 22

3.2 Sample of Study 23

3.3 Research Instrument 24

1. Think Aloud 24

2. Interview 24

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3.4 Procedures 25

3.5 Analysis of Data 25

FOUR DATA ANALYSIS

4.0 Introduction 30

4.1 The Reading-aloud Session 30

4.2 The Reading Profile 31

4.3 Background of the Subjects 33

4.4 The Data Analysis of Each Subject 34

Based On The Reading Of The Literary

Text

4.4.1 Subject with A1 34

4.4.2 Subject with A2 36

4.4.3 Subject with C3 37




4.5 The Analysis of Reading Strategies 44

Used Between A1 and A2, C3 and C4,

C5 and C6.

4.5.1 A1 and A2 subject 44

4.5.2 C3 and C4 subject 46

4.5.3 C5 and C6 subject 48

4.6 The Comparison of All Subjects 50

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FIVE CONCLUSION, RECOMMENDATIONS

AND TEACHING IMPLICATION

5.0 Introduction 54

5.1 Conclusion 54

5.2 Recommendations 55

5.3 Limitations and Recommendation for 56

Further Studies in Reading Strategy

of Literary Text.

5.4 Pedagogical Implication 57

REFERENCES 59

APPENDICES

Reading Instruction to the Subjects 61

Reading Text 62

Reading Strategies with the Sample of Text 66

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LIST OF TABLES

TABLE NUMBER TITLE PAGE

Table 1 Coding System of The Subject’s 29

Reading Strategies

Table 4.2.1 Table of The Subject’s Reading Profile 32

Table 4.3.1 Subjects’ English Paper Grade for SPM (1997) 33

Table 4.4.1 The Reading Strategies Used by A1 Subject 34

Table 4.4.2 The Reading Strategies Used by A2 Subject 36

Table 4.4.3 The Reading Strategies Used by C3 Subject 37




Table 4.5.1 The Analysis of Reading Strategies Between 44

A1 and A2 Subject


C3 and C4 Subject


C5 and C6

Table 4.6 The Comparison of Reading Strategies of All 50

Subjects

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LIST OF APPENDICES

TITLE PAGE

APPENDIX A READING INSTRUCTION TO 61

THE SUBJECTS

APPENDIX B SAMPLE OF A READING TEXT 62

APPENDIX C READING STRATEGIES WITH THE 66

SAMPLES OF TEXT

CHAPTER 1

1.0 Introduction

Reading is considered the most important of the four language skills

in a second language particularly in English as a second or foreign language (Carrell,

1988). For many students reading is the main reason why they learn the language. In

academic setting, it is very important for university students to be able to read effectively

as most academic materials are written in English. The need is even more for Teaching

English as a Second Language (TESL) students as they learn and use English during their

course. In Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), the TESL course was first introduced

in 1997. Most of the students who were accepted for this course obtained good grades for

their English subject in their Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM). Students who take out this

course need to take subjects such as The Structure Of English, The Fundamentals of

English, Linguistics I and II, Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, Methodology in TESL

I and II and Micro Teaching. In addition, they also need to take two literature subjects:

English Literature I (SHE 1212) and English Literature II (SHE1222). To be able to learn

these two subjects the students need to understand the literary texts used in their course.

However, most of the students had difficulties in understanding the literary texts used

during the course. This is because literature is a new subject to them since they have very

little exposure to such texts when they were at school. Thus, they had some difficulties

when taking this course. Since these students need to teach literature in schools when

they come out as a teacher, thus the ability to read and understand a literary text is highly

required for the TESL students if they want to be able to teach literature effectively in

school.

1.1 Background of The Study

All TESL students who are following the four year programme in UTM will have

to take two literature subjects and they are English Literature I (SHE 1212) and English

Literature II (SHE1222). Both of these subjects were offered in the first and second

semester of the first year of study. In learning these two subjects, the students have to

learn the literature components and the elements in the literature. They have to look at

short stories, poems, classic novels like Jane Eyre, journals, drama, and theatre. The

possibility that they have not even read or heard of these literature components is very

great. This is because literature was introduced in the English Programme (LEP) by the

Ministry of Education in schools in Malaysia only in 1992. It was included in one of the

period for English language subject and there was no assessment for it. In other words,

English literature during that time in the school was taught on the surface not in a great

depth. It was just recently in the year 2002 that the literature component was

implemented seriously in school. Yet the exposure to the literature was still less. Having

no or very little exposure to such literary text or reading genre can lead to difficulty in

understanding the text because students do not have the content schemata to understand

the unfamiliar words and terms found in the literary texts like what have been told by

Carrell & Eisterhold (1983: 560) “….the appropriate schemata must exist and must be

activated during text processing.”

According to Carrell (1988) schemata which is also known as background

knowledge has a strong bond between culture and language. The culture and language

had to be maintained for a non-native reader to have complete understanding of the

meaning of a text. Furthermore Carrell (1988) also stated that, “if the reader failed to

relate the linguistic meaning of a reading passage to cultural factors, it would result in

less information than total comprehension.”. This is true because when this problem

occurs, this will affect the students’ motivation in learning literature subject.

Thus, it is important for the TESL students to have the ability and the appropriate

reading strategies in reading a literary text. This is because literature is considered as a

new subject to most of the TESL students. For this reason, the students need to have good

reading skills and strategies in comprehending the literary text so that it can help them to

have a better understanding of literature. Furthermore, it is also necessary for TESL

students to be able to read and understand the literary texts since they have to teach

literature in school.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Johnson (1982) states that the characteristic of the text used in reading materials

have a large impact on readers’ ability to comprehend it. The level of vocabulary

difficulty, the familiarity of vocabulary used in the text and the cultural background of

the topic may give some effects on the reading strategies. Ruth Liew (2002) in her article

about The perks of reading aloud stated that, “if you know the story well, you will

naturally be able to read with expression.” (The Star, May 22, 2002:23).

However there are some ESL learners who face similar problems such as not able

to read a literary text well and they cannot understand some of the words found in the text

or the story line when they read a literary text. In other words, some of the problems

encountered were because of the learners’ unfamiliarity with the content of the text as

well as the vocabularies found in the text. This is because the text contains difficult level

of vocabulary, the vocabulary use in the text are not familiar to the readers and the

readers do not have any background knowledge that can help them to get the idea on

what they read. To overcome the difficulty in understanding the literary text, the ESL

learners have to know the reading strategies to be used and how to approach the text

effectively.

As for the English teachers, before they can teach the students, the teacher

him/herself must be a proficient reader of literary text. So, this is why it is important for

the teacher trainees to master their reading of the literary text.

1.3 Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to find out the reading strategies used by Fourth Year

TESL students when comprehending a literary text. This study is also conducted to find

out the reasons for using these strategies.

From this study, it is hoped that the researcher will be able to highlight the

problems that the students are facing during their reading of literary text. Moreover, it is

also hoped that from this study TESL students can improve their reading strategies in

understanding a literary text.

1.4 Research Questions

Based on the objectives of this research, there are several research

questions that serve as the main focus of this research. The research questions are:

1. What are the problems students usually faced when reading a literary

text?

2. What are the strategies used by TESL students when comprehending a

literary text?

3. Why do they use these strategies?

4. Do the strategies used help them to understand the text?

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