THE SELECTION OF AUTHENTIC TEXTS FOR READING REFLECTION ACTIVITY OF SECOND-YEAR MAINSTREAM STUDENTS AT FELTE, ULIS, VNU

Abstract

In the context of Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, students’ extensive reading is instructed, controlled and evaluated through Reading Reflection activity. In this task, they are encouraged to choose authentic texts since this type of texts can provide incredibly valuable language in real-life communication. As one of the first studies on students’ selection of authentic materials, this paper presents both important factors of authentic texts affecting students’ choices of materials for Reading Reflection and also the hindrances to their selecting procedures. By identifying these factors and hindrances, the researcher hopes to offer useful suggestions to improve the current situation. To achieve these aims, 3 cases out of 176 second-year mainstream students were deliberately chosen and investigated. It was indicated in this qualitative research that cases with lower English competence and little interest in Reading Reflection paid more attention to the readability, the appropriate length and content of authentic texts while the student with better English academic records and more interest in reading reflection greatly considered the exploitability, the sources as well as the writing styles of those texts. Moreover, these subjects overcame various hindrances before coming up to their final decisions. Those hindrances mostly came from disorganized sources of texts, low English competence, limited background knowledge, lack of guidance, lack of critical thinking, lack of study skills and lack of time. Thus, to minimize the hindrances to the students’ procedures of selecting authentic materials, teachers’ more thorough and passionate guidance was highly recommended together with learners’ habits of reading more frequently.