The effects of explicit instructions of reading strategies on reading comprehension at school of foreign languages, thai nguyen university

ding students‟ using these 
reading strategies. 
Pre-test and post-test 
In this study, I used two reading tests before 
and after the treatment. Because the students 
studied English at intermediate level in this 
term according to the curriculum, the two 
tests were designed at this level. To obtain the 
reliability and validity of the tests, I adopted 
tests from the question bank of English 
Department of the University and piloted tests 
had been applied with a group of 10 students 
of a different class to make sure the difficulty 
and discrimination at the right percentage. 
The two tests (pre-test and post-test) were 
designed with the same level: intermediate. 
Each test includes five reading texts with 25 
multiple choice questions in total to check if 
there is any progress that the students have 
made during the 10 weeks. The tests focused 
on checking the students‟ reading 
performance through the questions related to 
only four reading strategies namely 
skimming, scanning, guessing new words, 
and making inferences. . 
3.3. Data collection procedure 
Before the instruments were administered, 
the students had been informed about the 
purpose of the study. This is in line with 
research ethical principles [12], to ensure 
that 25 students‟ rights are not infringed. I 
personally administered the instruments to 
the students during the class to establish a 
rapport with the respondents and give 
clarifications on unclear items. 
4. Results and discussion 
4.1. Student’s reading comprehension 
The reading performance of the students in 
the pre-test and post-test 
As it can be seen from the statistics, there is a 
light increase in the students‟ reading 
comprehension performance. Specifically, the 
average score they gained from the two tests 
rises from 6.0 to 6.5 out of 10. The change is 
seen not only at the average score but also at 
the sub-groups of score. According to the 
results, the students in the class were divided 
into 5 groups: Excellent (8.5-10), Good (7-
8.4), Fair to good (5.5-6.9), Fair (4.0-5.4), 
Very poor and inadequate (1-4), which based 
on marking scheme at university in national 
policy. Specifically, while the number of 
students with good scores seems to be 
unchanged, there were more students with 
fair to good score (16 compared to 12) and 
much less students with fair scores (4 
compared to 8). 
Figure 1. The reading performance of the students 
in the pre - test and post -test (per test) 
The results from the pre-test and post-test 
demonstrated an improvement in the quality 
of the participant‟s reading comprehension. It 
is possibly indicated that EIRS improved the 
student‟s reading performance considerably. 
Students’ performance at the questions 
related to four strategies: Guessing new 
words from context, scanning, skimming, and 
making inferences. 
4.2. Students’ performance in the pre-test 
Figure 2 and 3 present the students‟ reading 
comprehension performance at the questions 
related to the four strategies achieved in the 
pretest, before the treatment. 
As it can be seen from the two figures, the 
students got more correct answers at the 
questions testing the 2 cognitive strategies 
namely guessing new words from context and 
scanning than that of the metacognitive 
strategies. The percentages of correct answers 
Diem Thi Thu Thuy TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 17 - 22 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 21 
of the two cognitive strategies are above 60% 
while that of skimming and making 
inferences are around 50%. While scanning 
gains the highest percentage with 69% at the 
pre-test, making inferences accounts for the 
lowest percentage with only 51%. This could 
be drawn that the students were better at 
questions related to cognitive strategies than 
that of meta-cognitive ones. 
Figure 2. Students’ performance at questions 
related to meta-cognitive strategies in pre-test (%) 
Figure 3. Students’ performance at questions 
related to cognitive strategies in pre-test (%) 
4.3. Students’ performance in the post-test 
compared to the pre-test 
It can be said that there is much difference in 
the results the students got with the questions 
of meta-cognitive and cognitive strategies, 
which can be seen much clearer from figure 4 
and 5. 
This might be blamed for the complexity of 
the two kinds of questions. In addition, the 
signs helping students identify the main ideas 
such as sub-headings or pictures are limited in 
the tests, which is dissimilar to the reading 
texts extracted from newspapers and 
magazines with a lot of colorful pictures they 
study in the text. To conclude, making 
inferences or reading between the lines is 
really a challenging strategy which requires a 
lot of mental practice and flexibility to think 
appropriately with diverse genre of reading 
texts. It can be said that, being aware of using 
the a few appropriate strategies at the same 
time, the students might understand the text 
better, which enables them to go in the right 
track as reading and avoid getting lost in the 
text. Therefore, with the more confidence in 
their thinking, they might determine where to 
get the information for the questions. 
45
50
55
60
Skimming Making
inferences
Pre-test
Post-test
Firgure 4. Comparison of students’ performance 
at questions related to meta-cognitive strategies (%) 
Figure 5. Comparison of students’ performance at 
questions related to cognitive strategies (%) 
5. Dicussions 
The results of the study proved that it is 
possible to accept the alternative hypothesis 
which states that the explicit helps students to 
increase their reading comprehension. The 
justifications are as follows. Firstly, the 
comparison of the pre-test and post-test result 
of the students who had received the course 
with explicit instructions of strategies 
Diem Thi Thu Thuy TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 17 - 22 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 22 
revealed that there was a little improvement 
in reading comprehension. The reason might 
be that the clear instructions of how to apply 
these strategies and reading activities 
provided in the course was useful because it 
provides students not only the proper ways to 
deal with the questions from the texts in their 
course but also the suitable tactics to answer 
questions in the different texts of the post- test 
when the teacher was not there to assist them. 
In addition, the immediate practice with 
specific texts after the teacher „guidance 
enabled them to clarify the strategies and then 
easily remember and apply them next time. 
As a result, when the students understood 
thoroughly and fully, they wanted to use them 
with enjoyment, therefore, they can acquire 
the knowledge through reading texts. 
6. Conclusion 
In summary, on the basis of the results of the 
current study, the researcher comes to the 
conclusion that, explicit instruction of reading 
strategies has positive effects on the students‟ 
reading comprehension. In addition, the 
students also highly appreciate the effects of 
teaching reading strategies explicitly because 
of its advantages and want to continue using 
the strategies in the future. It is recommended 
that the implementation of the program 
should be added in the curriculum with the 
approval of school‟s board because explicit 
instruction of reading strategies benefits 
students‟ improvement in language 
development. 
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