Methods of data collection
One of the studies on the natural process of reading was conducted by Rumelhart
(1980). He proposed an aspect of top-down and bottom-up is that both should be
occurring concurrently in order to result in the best comprehension.
Comprehending words, sentences, or even entire texts involves more than just
relying on one’s linguistic knowledge. In terms of Rumelhart’s hypothesis on the
nature of the reading process, I used a survey as an instrument. A questionnaire
was randomly distributed to 13 students of Vietnamese Studies faculty at HUE,
and at the age of 18 through 20. All of them have studied English for 6 years.
A five - point scale questionaire was designed for the purpose of this study where
students were presented with stated comprehension difficulties (e.g. unknown
words) and asked to grade their difficulty according to the agreement scale
(strongly agree - strongly disagree). The questionaire was written in Vietnamese,
the students’s L1. And then they were asked to circle the past experience in
English reading when they were high school students. The purpose of the two
questionnaire were to figure out what reading comprehension problems students
encounter and how teachers teach English reading, as well as how students read in
English.