Investigating how to enhance english reading comprehension for the Vietnamese tenthgraders at high schools in Gia lai province

INVESTIGATING HOW TO ENHANCE ENGLISH READING 
COMPREHENSION FOR THE VIETNAMESE TENTH-
GRADERS AT HIGH SCHOOLS IN GIA LAI PROVINCE 
Tran Van Phuoc1*, Phan Anh Dung2 
1University of Foreign Languages, Hue University; 2APC Gia Lai school 
Received: 09/01/2020; Revised: 12/03/2020; Accepted: 28/04/2020 
Abstract: Although the National Foreign Languages 2020 Project was launched in 2008 to improve the 
quality of ELT (English Language Teaching) at all levels of education in Vietnam, high school learners 
of English have encountered many difficulties in mastering communication skills, especially reading 
comprehension skill. The study examined and analyzed the result of applying speed reading strategies 
to treat a group of 20 tenth graders at Asian Pacific College School in Gia Lai Province who was 
involved in 15-week training course after having attended reading practice tests with another group. 
This experimental approach also showed that the application of fast reading strategies such as skimming 
and scanning did not only enhance learners' reading speed, confidence, and motivation but also forced 
them to concentrate better on doing comprehension questions as well. Hence, these strategies should be 
considered as a strategic choice to speed up reading comprehension skill for high school learners of 
English, which will surely help widen their knowledge as the foundation for mastering other 
communication skills in English. 
Keywords: Speed reading, strategies, reading comprehension skill, high school learners 
1. Introduction 
 Apart from speaking, listening, and writing, reading is considered to be one of the most important 
skills for accessing information and for communication. People can hardly deny the significant role of 
reading brought to human living. As Eskey (2005) pointed out, “many students of English as a Foreign 
Language (EFL), for example, rarely speak the language in their day-to-day lives but may need to read it 
in order to access the wealth of information recorded exclusively in the language” (p. 563). It is the fact 
that reading has played a vital part not only in people’s daily life but in school life as well. Reading 
comprehension is perhaps one of the most intensively studied fields in language teaching and learning. For 
the learners of English, fluent reading is of utmost importance, and one way to improve reading fluency is 
to do a speed reading course (Chung & Nation, 2006). Speed reading plays a vital role in reading 
comprehension. The value of reading connects closely to comprehension, not basing on how fast a reader 
can perform. In other words, speed reading without comprehension is considered as speed looking (Beale 
& Mullan, 2008). 
2. Theoretical framework 
 This section looks at the underlying theory on the speed reading and the review of the possible 
effectiveness of speed reading activities that improve reading speed and reading comprehension, then poses 
the research questions for this study. 
2.1. Reading and reading comprehension skills in learning EFL 
 The definition of reading is just traced correctly basing on what one intends to do or really can do in 
dealing with words or discourse. Reading intention might depend on various readers and on different things 
* Email: tvphuoc@hueuni.edu.vn 
they read (Nuttall, 1982). Hence, reading for meaning is the central goal of the reading process (Nuttall, 
1982). To EFL students, reading and reading comprehension offers them language input and improve their 
English proficiency. Good readers as EFL students become more autonomous and able to read not only in 
the classroom but also after leaving school to stay in touch with English. With reading comprehension 
activities, EFL students do not only improve in their reading abilities but also improve in using and 
increasing their English abilities and knowledge. Without getting much exposure to reading materials in 
class, EFL students are unlikely to make much progress (Nation, 2009). 
 As discussed in the previous section, reading skill plays an essential role in EFL learners to improve 
their English. For the learners of English, fluent reading is important, and one way to improve reading 
fluency is to do a speed reading course (Chung & Nation, 2006). Speed reading plays a vital role in reading 
comprehension. The value of reading connects closely to comprehension, not basing on how fast a reader 
can perform. In other words, speed reading without comprehension is considered as speed looking (Beale 
& Mullan, 2008). Therefore, to learn to speed read, the readers need to separate the reading comprehension 
from fast reading development, then improve the two processes with suitable strategies. The speed reading 
process comes about when the readers focus on important parts while ignoring less valuable or important 
parts of the text. To read effectively, readers have to identify and concentrate on the most important parts 
of the text with proper reading skills (Duggan & Payne, 2009). 
2.1.1. Speed reading strategies 
 Many studies have shown that increasing the reading rate will improve reading comprehension. As 
Samuels (1976) claims, it can be presumed that when a text is read fast, comprehension may become lower 
because attention is not involved in the reading process. That means despite the importance of automaticity 
in the process of fluent reading, attention should be paid on the meaning to comprehend the text. According 
to Carver (1982), the average reading rate for a college student is about 300 wpm for reading, 200 wpm for 
learning, and 138 wpm for memorizing. However, reading at a rate between 250 wpm and 350 wpm allows 
readers to comprehend a text most efficiently (Carver, ibid). Carver (1990) made a distinction between five 
types of reading: scanning, skimming, rauding (just to understand the message), learning (to acquire the 
information), and memorizing (to be able to recall the facts) and stated that each type is associated with 
different reading rates. The main aim of teaching reading is to enable students to comprehend reading from 
different contents easily. Farstrup (2002) stated that teachers should be aware and knowledgeable of many 
instructional methods and strategies available to promote students’ reading comprehension and motivate 
students towards reading, promote their interest and encouragement in reading comprehension, develop 
their reading comprehension skills, and aid them in accomplishing reading comprehension tasks. 
 Speed reading strategies are reading techniques that help readers read faster than normal, especially 
by acquired techniques of skimming and controlled eye movements. For language learners as well as native 
speakers, the two most valuable reading strategies and techniques are skimming and scanning (Brown, 
1994). Skimming and scanning, in some ways, make readers more flexible while reading. They read on the 
purposes of getting information which they need quickly without wasting time. These readers do not need 
everything but the specific information they want to know by reading with some necessary skills and 
methods. 
 Beale (2013) wrote ideas about speed reading strategies as "people who know how to skim and scan 
are flexible readers. They read according to their purpose and get the information they need quickly without 
wasting time. They do not need everything, which increases their reading speed. Their skill lies in knowing 
what specific information to read and which method to read" (p. 1). 
 Skimming is reading a text or a passage quickly to get a general idea. When using skimming reading, 
learners do not need to read every word; therefore, this strategy is usually used in a timed reading task and 
to encourage speed. Skimming is helpful in stages of pre-reading, reviewing, and reading processes. With 
skimming strategies, learners do not need to read everything in a limited time, as teachers set a timed task 
and encourage speed (Beaver & Bower, 1970). 
 Scanning is a strategy of reading to cover several materials rapidly to identify a specific aspect or 
piece of information. It is useful to point out a particular name, date, statistic, or fact without reading the 
whole text (Johns, 2007). 
 Skimming and scanning help in improving the students’ speed and help in improving their abilities 
of comprehension. Broughton et al. (1980), Beaver and Bower (1970) agreed that if the learners who want 
to be faster in reading comprehending should need to practice skimming and scanning. 
 In EFL teaching and learning in Vietnam educational system, strategies of skimming and scanning 
are mainly used to teach EFL students to improve their reading speed and reading comprehension also. 
Therefore, in this study, skimming and scanning are the major component techniques in speed reading 
strategies used in the training course. 
2.1.2. Timed reading and paced reading activities 
 Timed reading involves having students read under time pressure to improve reading speed to an 
optimal rate that supports comprehension rather than developing speedy readers. In addition, “time 
limitations may enhance reading comprehension by promoting mindfulness in students, a construct which 
involves the exertions of more effort and motivation” (Walczyk et al., 1999, p. 156). The favored approach, 
at least in EFL, seems to be timed reading (Atkins, 2010, Taferner & Murray, 2013), and some evidence 
suggested that for intermediate-level EFL learners, timed reading leads to more significant gains in reading 
speed. The standard approach to timed reading instruction is described by Nation (2009). 
 Another kind of speed reading activity is paced reading. Paced reading is referred to one of the ways 
to increase students’ reading speed, which accelerate reading (Anderson, 1999; Cushing-Weigle & Jensen, 
1996 cited in Chang, 2010), and it has students read the texts under some degree of time pressure. Meyer 
(1999) stated that timed reading and paced reading activities contributed to developing learners’ reading 
fluency with the ability to read text rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly, and automatically with little attention to 
the mechanics of reading such as decoding. To support the approach from previous studies, Magno (2010) 
stated that fluency in reading is a mark of reading proficiency. 
2.2. Previous studies 
 Several studies have been carried out to explore the effectiveness of timed reading or speed reading 
in order to improve reading fluency in various learning contexts (Utsu, 2004, 2005; Chung & Nation, 2006; 
Crawford, 2008; Atkins, 2010). However, as a component of timed reading activities, whether time affects 
the improvement in speed and comprehension level has still been debatable. 
 Maxwell (1972) conducted a study to examine skimming and scanning improvement and to focus on 
the need for these skills. The study consequently concludes that the best way for students to meet the effects 
of the information explosion on school reading task lists is to become a competent and confident skimmer 
and scanner. 
 Farstrup and Samuels (2002) commented in their book that teachers should acknowledge and be 
proficient in many available instructional methods and strategies to help their students enhance reading 
comprehension and to motivate them to learn reading well. He also stated that teachers’ awareness and 
knowledge of the instructional methods strategies help to promote students’ interest and encouragement in 
reading comprehension and to develop their reading comprehension skills as well as to improve their 
competence in reading comprehension tasks. 
 Chung and Nation (2006) examined the influence of a speed reading course on EFL learners in a 
university in Korea. The study included 40 participants who did 23 timed reading texts for nine weeks. The 
researchers found significant improvement in nearly all the subjects which participants studied with an 
average increase of 52% of reading rate, from 141 words per minute to 214 words per minute. However, 
the researchers stated one limitation of the research, which was the lack of a control group; a second was 
absence of measure of reading comprehension was included. Nation (2009), in his article, reading faster, 
concludes that it has been suggested that reading too slowly can have adverse effects on comprehension. 
 Chang (2010) carried out a research study on enhancing reading fluency throughout the timed 
reading. An experimental 13-week timed reading activity was integrated into a normal curriculum aiming 
to improve students’ reading rates. Eighty-four college students as participants were emplaced in an 
experimental and a control group and pre-tests, and post-tests as test instruments were used on reading 
speed and comprehension. Results indicated that students doing the timed reading activity increased their 
reading speed on average by 29 words per minute (25%) and comprehension by 63 (4%). Moreover, 
students who did the timed reading activity became confident in and concentrated on their reading (Walczyk 
et al., 1999). 
 In Vietnam, as in many other countries, EFL learners seem to read much more slowly than in their 
native language. The fact is that, in every English test at school, students have to do at least 20% of the reading 
test section of the total test (MOET of Gia Lai, 2014), which accounts for two out of ten marks. To improve 
reading skills, it is not only one of the main aims for our total mark in a test but our reading comprehension 
in daily life in different contexts as well. 
 Tran (2016), in her study, shared the view that there is a relationship between reading rate and reading 
comprehension, and that EFL learners can be trained to improve their reading speed and reading 
comprehension at the same time. Tran’s experiment involves four groups of participants who are first-year 
students at a university in Vietnam. It was found that after the treatment, most participants were reading 
with 70% accuracy of comprehension, and they could maintain it with an unnoticeable increase as they 
increased their reading speed. Tran (2016) concluded the findings indicate that reading fluency 
improvement does not necessarily happen with a trade-off in reading comprehension. By contrast, reading 
comprehension can be maintained and even improved, along with reading speed development. 
 Nguyen et al. (2018) experimented in examining and assessing the effects of the timed reading 
intervention on the students’ reading speed and reading comprehension. The experiment included 50 
participants who came from the Economics Department of Thai Nguyen University of Economics and 
Business Administration (TUEBA). The participants were randomly chosen to take the pre-test, based on 
which the participants were divided into three groups. In the study, a pre-test, a post-test, and a reading rate 
chart were utilized to examine and to measure the students’ reading rate and reading comprehension. In 
light of the study result, both students’ reading speed and reading comprehension were significantly 
improved after the training course with timed reading texts as an intervention. 
 The studies by Tran (2016) and Nguyen et al. (2018) did not look into the influence of speed reading 
strategies upon high school students, which is the gap in this area of research. Therefore, this study aims to 
examine how to enhance English reading comprehension for the Vietnamese tenth-graders at high school 
in Gia Lai Province, Asia Pacific College school. For that purpose, the following question was to be 
answered: What is the effectiveness of speed readingstrategies instruction on tenth-grade students’ 
comprehension? 
3. Methods 
3.1. Research approach 
 With the aim of exploring the application of speed reading strategies and their effects on students’ 
reading comprehension, this study uses the experimental approach. In the study, a combination of 
qualitative and quantitative methods is conducted to secure the reliability and validity of the study, which 
could be explained by a couple of reasons. Firstly, the vital aims of the study are to examine the influence 
of some speed reading strategies on improving the 10th-grade students' reading comprehension. For more 
details, an intervention of speed reading strategies and speed reading texts will be implemented to see 
whether there will be any differences between experimental group students' and control group students' 
reading comprehension. Secondly, the study aims to discover the learners' perceptions of speed reading 
strategies and their attitudes toward reading English materials after being trained with speed reading 
strategies for 15 weeks. 
3.2. Population, sampling, and participants 
 The population in this experimental study consists of 40 students of Grade 10 at Asia Pacific College 
in Pleiku, Gia Lai, Viet Nam, who are aged fifteen to sixteen and have been learning English for five years 
with seven-year English curriculum. 
 The samples as the participants for the research were selected because they are key informants and 
knowledgeable about the problems or phenomena which the researcher was investigating (McMillan & 
Schumacher, 1993). The reasons for choice were (1) the researcher is working as English teacher at APC; 
(2) the research problem and purpose arise through a long process of teaching reading comprehension and 
observing students’ reading comprehension learning activities; and, (3) the selected site (APC) should have 
the likelihood that the viewpoints are present and could be studied (McMillan & Schumacher, ibid). 
Table 1. Sample for pre-test and post-test 
No. Class Assigned group N 
1 10A1 Control group 20 
2 10A2 Experimental group 20 
3.3. Pre-test and post-test on speed reading and reading comprehension 
 As designed in the research, reading comprehension tests with one at the beginning of the study (pre-
test) and one at the end of the study (post-test) were delivered to both the experimental group and the control 
group. The teacher gave students in both the control and experimental groups the reading pre-test in the 
first week of the experiment period, before teaching the strategies of speed reading. Reading texts in the 
pre-test were selected from the assigned summative test for grade 10th at the end of the first semester of 
the academic school year 2018-2019. The post-test text is the comprehension test that has been selected and 
adapted from the website https://kiemtra.sachmem.vn/ as a resource for EFL teaching, learning, and testing. 
The pre-test, as well as the post-test, comprises four reading texts of approximately 300 words each and has 
twenty comprehension questions, five questions for each reading text. After 15 weeks of practicing, our 
teachers prepared another reading comprehension test as post-test. This test was given after the 
experimental period to see the effect of the experiment and the students' reading comprehension progress 
on reading comprehension. 
3.4. Study training materials 
 During the experimental period, the teacher applied speed reading strategies as implementing 
instruments in the experimental group, meanwhile, the control group was taught with standard curriculum 
textbooks. 
 Materials for treatment included thirty reading practice texts which were adapted from Tieng Anh 10 
(Hoang & Nguyen, 2018), Bai Tap Tieng Anh 10 (Luu Hoang Tri, 2016), and from website 
www.freereadingtest.com. Students in the experimental group did two reading practice texts per week. Each 
treatment reading practice text consists of five comprehension questions. These texts with speed reading 
strategies were applied to the experimental group in APC during 15 weeks