Using short stories to improve reading skills of the seventh graders at a secondary school in Dong Anh district = Sử dụng truyện ngắn để nâng cao kỹ năng đọc của học sinh lớp 7 tại trường THCS ở huyện Đông Anh

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to report the result of an action research on using short stories to improve 40 seventh graders’ reading skills. The majority of students struggled with reading comprehension for a variety of reasons, including restricted vocabularies, challenges in forming sentences within paragraphs, and difficulties in determining the main concepts of the book. It attempted to find their common interests and learning styles in order to inform suitable teaching lessons. Simultaneously, this study also came up with the practical suggestions for teachers to incorporate short stories in teaching reading skills. The researcher had conducted pre-test, post-test and a questionnaire for students. The selection of the pretest-posttest design allowed the investigator to compare the gained scores before and after students learned reading lessons through short stories. The researcher had carried out action research for the exploration because this kind of study created solutions that made a process or program better, e.g. improving English reading comprehension. The data collection had found out that students had difficulties in learning reading sections. Then, the results of the study had shown notable improvement on students’ reading competence through short stories inserting. The author’s most surprising and fascinating achievement appeared to be the pupils’ improvements.