THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Reading Comprehension Problems Encountered by EFL Students at a University in
Vietnam
Research Proposal
For
Graduation Thesis
Supervisor: …………La Thi Thuy Dung ………….
Student: ………Duong Van Khuong……………….
Code: ………DTF2172202010157……………….
Class: ………Advanced Class K44……………….
Thai Nguyen, December 2024
1. Introduction
1.1 Rationale for the study
Reading comprehension is a complex, multi-faceted skill composed of numerous cognitive
processes including decoding, syntactic parsing, integration of background knowledge, etc.
(Oakhill & Elbro, 2014). As for the university students and particularly EFL learners, reading
comprehension inherently become harder in regards to linguistics, and socio-culture factors,
not to mention academic requirement. Indeed, the rising global phenomenon of higher
education in Vietnam implies that students are now likely to read and understand academic
texts in English, mainly within independent study and research. However, many Vietnamese
students have had little opportunity to practice and develop their reading comprehension skills
before entering the university level, creating a gap in their academic readiness to reach the
academic expectations that are set at the university level.
Current researches, including that of Le and Nguyen (2017), find that many Vietnamese
students are struggling with not only understanding vocabulary and grammar but also
integrating background knowledge and contextual information into their reading practices.
According to Carrell (1988), effective reading comprehension is a condition where the reader
does not simply decode the text but activates earlier knowledge, makes inferences, and
critically evaluates his or her content. The kind of critical reading that helps students engage
with difficult academic texts does not develop much in Vietnam because of the emphasis on
rote learning; hence students may find it difficult to connect the information to their own
knowledge or to the academic materials.
Thus, there is an essential need for research examining the specific difficulties that
Vietnamese students encounter concerning academic reading and how such problems affect
their understanding and engagement with academic texts. Additionally, an understanding of
the challenges of reading comprehension will add important information and stimulus for
future research.
1.2. Aim of the Study
The study attempts to identify key factors that influence students’ ability to comprehend
English texts and explore potential strategies for improving their reading skills. It delves into
the difficulties in English reading comprehension experienced by learners at tertiary level and
how those problems affect students' success in understanding the context and meanings of
English-language texts.
1.3. Scope of the Study
This study focuses on the reading comprehension challenges faced by third-year students at a
university in Vietnam. It examines the difficulties encountered in a range of academic
subjects and how these challenges affect students' academic performance.
1.4. Significance of the study
The findings of this study provide information on the reading comprehension problems
encountered by students at a university in Vietnam. This study could be used as a guideline
for students for using the appropriate techniques and strategies while interacting with texts in
order to improve their overall reading comprehension ability . This paper can also help the
teachers to better understand their students' reading comprehension problems and to find an
appropriate way for teaching reading
1.5. Questions of the study
What are the main factors that contribute to reading comprehension difficulties for EFL
learners at the university level, and how do these factors impact their academic
performance?
This question explores the challenges of EFL learners, such as vocabulary knowledge,
sentence structure, background knowledge. It demands an in-depth understanding of
how these factors collectively affect their ability to comprehend texts in English
How can university-level EFL learners adopt strategies or interventions to improve
reading comprehension skills ?
This question focuses on practical approaches overcoming reading comprehension
issues. It encourages students to think about solutions that will have significant impact
on their performance at school. The teachers can also count on this study to provide
suitable educational programs to help the students to become better.
2. Literature review
2.1. Theories of Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is usually refer to the dual-process framework, which combines
bottom-up and top-down routes. For instance, according to the bottom-up approach the
emphasis should be on decoding linguistic elements of language (words, syntax, phonology)
where as top-down approach emphasizes background knowledge background expectations
and prior experiences for drawing meaning out of the text (Rumelhart, 1980). Such processes
are all the more important when students read academic texts (in a foreign language). Grabe
reads reading comprehension as being part linguistic and cognitive interaction by readers with
the text (2009). This implies understanding is dependent on the reader being able to draw
from knowledge and strategies for inferencing as well as strategies for information synthesis
as well facilities in language. Multi-level comprehension (word level, bottom-up; higher order
meaning & analysis) is hard for non-native speakers to obtain.
2.2. Cultural and Educational Factors
Over the decades, Vietnamese higher education explicitly emphasizes memorization and rote
learning (Nguyen 2014), which is at odds with the critical thinking, and analytical reading
skills needed to make sense of academic texts, especially a foreign language. Carrell (1989)
contends that reading comprehension is not just decoding words, it also requires bringing to
the written text background knowledge, making inferences and thinking critically about what
we read. However, for students educated in a rote, less active learning environment these
skills might not be as quick to work. In addition, Vietnamese students have also cultural
barrier while reading texts because those text are leaned down from Western perspective.
Western academic text almost presume an understanding of the cultural, social and historical
underpinnings of the material by students who have little to no interest or dedication required
to be fully familar with their subject. This is in accordance with what Pham (2015) has stated,
namely that such a gap between cultural and historical spheres interferes in interpreting the
latent meanings and presumptions in academic texts. The new cultural and contextual
obstacles on reading comprehension layer the Vietnamese students.
2.3. Reading Comprehension Challenges for Vietnamese Students
Vietnam has many studies that describe the particular problems of reading comprehension
faced by students. Pham (2015) says a lot of students encounter vocabulary challenges; they
have discourses and interpersonal discussions and English exposure in their academic texts.
This is especially pressing for them because these texts have high level of specialised
vocabulary as well complex sentence structures. Additionally, Vietnamese students Le and
Nguyen (2017) state that one of the difficulties is impossible to recognize the academic text
structure: students can not analyze the main ideas, not refer to the contents of arguments
organization and do not know how to separate the key information from supporting traits.
Such challenges are often intensified by heavy lack in academic fields related disciplines
where students do not have the prior knowledge. Furthermore, many students in Vietnam
complain of anxiety and feeling incompetent when dealing with English academic texts. This
is influenced by linguistic and cultural sources as well the pressure to perform academically.
3. Methodology
3.1. Subjects of the study
This study is designed to explore reading comprehension of EFL students . It is carried out at
an foreign language school in the second term of the 2024-2025 school year. The participants
of the study are students who have intermediate English level according to CEFR standard.
3.2. Data collection instruments
This research adopts quantitative surveys to gather data from university students. The
quantitative component includes an online survey that is specifically designed via Google
Form tool to assess students' self-reported difficulties and strategies for improving reading
comprehension.
3.3. Procedures of data collection
The designated questionnaire is used to collect the data of reading comprehension problems of
EFL learners. The researcher will ask his supervisor for her comments fifteen minutes before
the first classes begin. 30 minutes after the lesson starts, the researcher comes and pay
attention to the students. Then he will explain clearly the purposes of the questionnaire which
are to find the students’ reading comprehension problems, the factors affecting their
performance and to find ways to improve the students’ reading skills in overall. Oral
instructions and explanations are going to be detailed to the learners by the researcher before
they answer the questionnaire to avoid any misunderstandings. Then the researcher instruct
the students to complete it. After 15 minutes, completed questionnaires will be collected
3.4. Data analysis
The quantitative data from the questionnaires will be analyzed using Excel program. In order
to answer the two research questions, the descriptive statistics of frequencies and percentages
will be used. The primary keypoints will be pointed out. The researcher asks his supervisor
for discussion.
4. Expected results
It is expected that the overall analysis of the data obtained from the questionnaire would
reveal several EFL students’ problems in reading English texts, materials such as vocabulary,
complex structures along with the inability to find information of the text.
5. Proposed schedule:
March 2025: Collect data according to the designated schedule, within 4 weeks in the second
term of 2024-2025 school year.
April 2025: Analyze the data, observe the key trends, features of the collected data.
May 2025: Finish the research
6. References
J Oakhill, K Cain, C Elbro. (2014) Reading comprehension difficulties. In: Handbook of
children’s literacy.
Grabe, W. (2009). Teaching and Testing Reading. The handbook of language teaching.
Rumelhart, D. E. "Schemata. The Building Blocks of Cognition."
PL Carrell - The modern language journal, 1989 – JSTOR
Nguyen, T. T. B., & Nguyen, H. B. (2018). The effects of question-answer strategy on EFL
high school students' reading comprehension.
L Pham, L Tran. (2015) International Studies in Sociology of Education.
Nguyen, et al. (2014). Higher Education in Vietnam
Nguyen, et al. (2017). Reading strategy instruction to Vietnamese young language learners:
Teachers’ prac-tices and perceptions
