Designing and Evaluating an Educational Innovation, Using K-W-L Strategy for the Trial

This is a case study of innovation through action research to introduce the ỉmprovement based on changing from traditional way to a kind of communicative approach to teach reading comprehension in class. With the description of the 5-step innovation, starting with (1) Discovering problem, and analyzing reasons; (2) Choosing A suitable strategy for trial; (3) The Preparation for implementing the strategy; (4) The Implementing the innovation and monitoring its progress; (5) The analysis of findings and Evaluating the innovation, mainly using Problem-solving model with a Normative reeducative strategy, it is a kind of selective contact change, which can be the illustration for the process of doing a research into the innovation in education. The aim of this study is to change students’ thinking about reading in class to make them interested in reading and improve their extra-activity of extensive reading. Until now the innovation somewhat has a little success. The trial focuses on the importance of the schema in comprehension especially in reading process. The hypothesis is that the KWL strategy: (a thinking-reading process) will help students to change from negative to positive attitude towards reading, to increase their reading time inside as well as outside the classroom in order to improve their reading skill. Analysis of the experimental and survey data indicated that students who received the treatments made lots of progress in reading skill as well as changed from negative to positive attitude towards reading. This article should be combined with the article “Trying K-W-L Strategy on Teaching Reading Comprehension to Passive Students in Vietnam”. International Journal of Language and Linguistics USA. ISSN 2330-0221, 2013, also written by Tran Thi Thanh Dieu, PhD, with detailed description of the trial. From this innovation it is concluded that more researches should be carried out to find out how to use this strategy effectively to make students accustomed to applying this method for their extra activities on extensive reading outside the classroom.


Introducton
What does innovation in education mean to you, to me, to the teachers? The question always appears in my mind, especially when there are any students facing a kind of difficulty. Therefore, to a teacher, "Innovation in education simply means doing what's best for all students. Teachers, lessons, and curriculum have to be flexible. We have to get our students to think and ask questions. We need to pique their curiosity, and find ways to keep them interested. Innovation means change, so it must be something new, something different from what have been used ineffectively or unsuitably any more.
The paper begins with a brief introduction of the organization culture and definition of some key terms relating to the innovation. The trial methodology was described through five innovative steps, starting with Discovering problem, and analyzing reasons, then after choosing a suitable strategy for trial, the Preparation for implementing the strategy was carried out. The fourth step was the Implementing the innovation and monitoring its progress. Analysis of findings and Evaluating the innovation was made at the end of the trial together with the identification of some closing marks that are worth considering to achieve a better result of the innovation. Holliday (1994) points out that "Achieving appropriate methodology depends on learning about what happens between people in the classroom." (p. 162) [1]. Therefore, with our experience as English teachers as well as students studying English from the past, we have found learning and teaching reading in English the most difficult. The most popular are the misunderstanding one another because of lacking background knowledge, the boring atmosphere, and the difficulty in finding our students' problem about making questions in class. According to Dr. Goerge Jacob, "The simple procedure helps teachers become more responsive to the students' knowledge and interests when reading expository material, and models for students the active thinking involved in reading information is the K-W-L strategy (a thinking-reading process: the first step: K: Activate what students know and then discuss to find out what they want to know: W and last, after studying the text, they have to summarize what they learned and approach further to what they need to learn more (extra-knowledge: L): A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text" (in Jacob and Renandya, 1999, p. 42) [2]. Nobody would think of questioning the advantages of this strategy, but the passive students are a vexed question. I strongly believe in the effect of this strategy on passive students. However, as a proverb goes: "Seeing is believing", I decided to do a research to prove the advantage of this strategy in my innovation process with the hope to convince teachers to use this strategy in teaching reading, especially to passive students although "it is not easy to activate schema" as many teachers have said. Therefore, to carry out an innovation to improve our teaching ability and to try to find out a suitable way to overcome the difficulties above, a small scale action research on trying and proving the effect of K-W-L strategy on reading comprehension was conducted at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities -VNU. However, a limit time (three months from week 7 to week 18 in the twenty-four-week research process was equal to a semester teaching), for the training trial of this teaching innovation detailedly described and carefully analyzed, this research can be the illustration for a design of an innovational process. In addition, although this strategy is not new and in the Western view, it seems not to be the innovation, this strategy is hardly used in Vietnamese context. Moreover, no one can deny the effect of KLW strategy but Vietnamese teachers hesitate to use it in teaching reading because of the difficulty in activating schema. Therefore, with the detailed lesson plans applying KWL strategy as well as data analysis of both survey and experimental research in the article by Tran Thi Thanh Dieu (PhD.), title "Trying K-W-L Strategy on Teaching Reading Comprehension to Passive Students in Vietnam" International Journal of Language and Linguistics USA. ISSN 2330-0221, 2013 [3], this trial once again determines the advantages and the effect of this KLW strategy in Vietnamese context. Last, hopefully, this research will be one way of motivating teachers to use K-W-L strategy as well as frequently carry out the innovation to solve student's problems.

Cultural Characteristics of the Innovation Context
This is the Problem solving model that is popular and suitable for promoting change in education associated with: a) Role Organizational culture in which individuals are role occupants; b) Task Organizational Culture in which project oriented without standardization of procedure across the organization; c) Person Organizational Culture with minimal structure and individual talents are given a priority. After finding out some problems happening in the reading class, the teacher (I, myself) chose a strategy (KLW) with the hope to improve that situation so the teacher is Adopters, Implementers and also Change agents.
Bottom-up model of innovation that was used in Action research continuously that associates with Task or Person organization culture. This model can encourage teacher responsibility and can help the innovation more likely successful because of being perceived as necessary by insiders based on local context to produce an appropriate methodology. As a result, the innovator can be seen as selfactivating and non passive.
"Achieving appropriate methodology depends on learning about what happens between people in classroom" (Holliday, 1994, p. 162) and also according to him "The classroom teacher should consider the classroom culture before making an innovation" [1]. Following this instruction, the KWL strategy is mainly based on CLT (Communicative language teaching) with the "strong" version that is seen appropriate for TEESP situation.
Moreover, according to Holliday, the learning group ideal needs to be taken as a hypothesis for optimum methodologies, which need to be validated and adapted in the light of real socio-cultural situation (Holliday 1994, p. 109) [1]. Therefore, the innovation context is analyzed through the following characteristics: a) The students have a chance to communicate with the text that helps them have ideas for discussion. Without the text, it is not easy for students to make an independent conversation themselves since Vietnam is not a country using English as a second language. As a result, students do not have much chance to practise speaking English, leading to their limited ability of speaking English (Tran Thi Thanh Dieu, 2013) [3]. b) In every unit, there is a part in which students are encouraged to write down what they learned from reading to review special structures from the Text. As a result, the students have chances to investigate structures within the text with as little as possible help from the teacher, which trains them become independent in learning and creating language themselves (Tran Thi Thanh Dieu, 2013) [3]. c) Because specialist vocabulary and knowledge is not easy to activate in order to speak in English; therefore, the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), with the six characteristics bellows is suitable to allow students not to speak English all the time. Students can use mother tongue to discuss any difficult problems in their field and then use the specialist vocabularies provided in the Vocabulary part in the textbook to translate and gradually trained to talk about their specialist field in English. This is the University context where almost (or "all" can be used here) students are Vietnamese so this is suitable for a monolingual class. d) CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) is defined through these six characteristics (Brown 2001)  At time fluency will be more important than accuracy if language used to be meaningful iv. Classroom task should equip students to use the language effectively outside the classroom. v. Students are given an opportunity to reflect on their own learning and to develop autonomous learning. vi. The role of the teacher is facilitator and guide rather than source of all knowledge.

Cultural Characteristics of Teachers and Students for Whom This New Strategy Was Used
The

Methodology
This project based on the third level of operational planning (Halland and Hewings, 2001) [5], which accounts for teachers' everyday lesson planning as well as teaching; and consists of the day-to-day implementation of syllabus decisions. The teaching approach is negotiating between teachers and students in which teachers are change agents and suppliers; students are clients (Markee 1997, p. 78) [6]. Based on a systematic behavioral analysis of language learners' needs, we made the decision for the Innovation (use KLW in the trial) to play the role of Stakeholder as an Adopters, Supplier and Implementers as well as Change agents. Some colleagues (other teachers) have the duty to observe the trial class. Students are Clients. Some colleagues and Equipment section agents are Suppliers. At the beginning, there were some resists from some teachers who were accustomed to the traditional approach and afraid of changing the way of teaching, as well as some students who are too passive. This is a Selective contact change that is external to the social system based on the internal recognition of the need for change by members of the social system. In other words, the Insider (I) selects an innovation (new strategy: KWL strategy) from outside the social system (Rogers & Shoemaker (1962) in Markee) [6]. Problem-solving model that is popular and suitable for promoting change in education with Normative Re-educative strategy used. Bottom-up model of innovation continuously used in Action research that associates with Task or Person organization culture. This model can encourage teacher's responsibility and can help the innovation more likely successful due to being perceived as necessary by insiders based on local context to produce an appropriate methodology. As a result, the innovator can be seen as selfactivating and non passive accompanied with the Secondary Innovation such as the Material Resource: Library, Website, Internet for choosing reading text suitable for a certain field such as History or Geography, etcetera.
Normative Re-educative strategy was used so some teachers and students were non-activating and non-passive because of their relative advantages. This is also useful for education system and gives the change in attitudes, belief, values, skill, and relationship.
Step 4: Implementing the innovation and monitoring its progress,.
Step 5: Analysis of finding and Evaluating the innovation.

Introducing innovation is complex
The innovation did not have much support from the leaders Vietnamese teachers are not interested much in the change The main job of change agent is effect change Generally, change agent was successful in effecting change. The change agent tried to provide a strong leadership as a consultant rather than a manager to explain clearly why and how to use the KLW strategy

Type Subtype Description
Good communication is vital There has been a good communication among participants such as some staff meetings for discussion, advice and observation checklist. Email address of the innovator A strategy approach is necessary Strategic approach to manage change with long-term airs carried out by five steps (Markee, N, 1997, p. 176) [6] Innovation is messy and unpredictable process The supplier and implementer were reminded to prepare for a long-term process but this innovation confront with the doubt and resist of colleagues The innovation really needs more time to effect change. In fact the trial took longer than originally anticipated Innovation take longer than predicted Misunderstanding is likely It is important for implementer to have a stake in the innovation they are expected to implement This is the self-improvement so the innovator is the implementer herself Change agent need to work through opinion leader Opinion leaders for working through Methodology of the innovation is based on Trump's 5-step innovation sequence (White, 1988

Step 1: Discovering and Analyzing Problem, Students Objective and Subjective Needs
Holliday (1994) points out "Achieving appropriate methodology depends on learning about what happens between people in the classroom." (p. 162) [1]. And he also argues that the classroom teacher is the best position to understand the classroom culture, though other may be involved introducing innovation they need to base their ideas on the classroom culture. (Holliday, 1994, p. 162) [1]. Therefore with my own experience as a student studying English and when becoming a teacher as well as sharing feeling with colleagues, I realized the difficulties in learning as well as teaching reading in English. That is the misunderstanding one another due to lacking background knowledge, the boring atmosphere and the difficulty in finding out students' problem about making questions in class (Tran Thi Thanh Dieu, 2013) [3]. With these problems, the time has come when we should find out the solution for reading classes, to change from "sleepy" to "interesting" and "exciting".

Step 2: Choosing a Suitable Strategy for Trial
According to Anderson's research, prior knowledge is extremely important in influencing how we interpret what we read and what we learn from reading. To read well, we must access the knowledge we already have about the topic or make it available appropriately so that comprehension can occur (Anderson and Pichert, 1987; Bransford, 1983) [8]. Moreover, in a research paper about Building Schema in a Reading Class, Yuka Homan, Musashi Institute of Technology has observed the way of assessing understanding and concluded that comprehension of a foreign-language depends not just on knowledge of the second language but also on prior knowledge of the topic or content as well as there was evidence of statistically significant difference. As a ressult, that subjects did better with passage in their field and prior knowledge can create interest in readers. With this importance of schema, this project hope to recommend a way to overcome difficulties in teaching Reading and encourage teachers to use it. According to Dr. Goerge Jacob, "The simple procedure helps teachers become more responsive to the students' knowledge and interests when reading expository material, and it models for students the active thinking involved in reading information is the K-W-L strategy (a thinking-reading process: the first step: K: Activate what students know and then discuss to find out what they want to know: W and last, after studying the text, they have to summarize what they learned and approach further to what they need to learn more (extra-knowledge): L.): A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text" (Goerge Jacob and Willy Renandya, 1999, p. 42) [2]. Nobody would think of questioning the advantages of this strategy, but passive student is a vexed question. I strongly believe in the effect of this strategy on passive students. However, as a proverb goes: "Seeing is believing", I'd like to do a trial to prove the advantage of this strategy with the hope to convince teachers to use this strategy in teaching reading, especially to passive students (Tran Thi Thanh Dieu, 2013) [3].
In short, the objectives of this project were: -To prove that KWL method can help passive students improve their Reading comprehension skill.
-To find out what the students' thinking about the KWL method is. and to change from students' negative to positive attitudes towards reading class after the KWL method was used.
-To convince teachers to use this strategy in teaching reading, especially to passive students although "it is not easy to activate schema" as many teachers have said. The project objective 1. To prove that KWL method can help passive students improve their reading comprehension skill. 2. To find out the students' thinking about the KWL method and to change from students' negative to positive attitudes towards Reading class after the KWL method was used. 3. To convince teachers to use this strategy in teaching reading, especially to passive students although "it is not easy to activate schema" as many teachers have said.

Brief Description of the Trial
The following is the brief description of the trial outline above, directly extracted from the article "Trying K-W-L

Design
i. Some features analysis of the trial  [3].
Experimental research used to see if there is some kinds of cause and effect relationship. What have to do is to isolate the two variables, get some data, and see how data compared. Experiments, or other forms of quantitative research, are useful when working with numerically measurable data under controlled conditions. It provides excellent techniques for getting very specific information, because when finding out the effect of the KWL strategy, we have to work with numerically measurable data, the score of testing from the two kinds of population: control groups and experimental groups. However, to people, who often act in complex and unexpected ways are beyond the parameters of experimental hypothesis. Experimental exactitude, which might require controlled conditions, tends to make people behave self-consciously or unnaturally. The treatment is Teaching using KWL strategy Survey research Used with the function of (1) Opinion survey to uncover the opinion and attitudes of the participant about specific issues (KWL strategy and its effects). Questions were developed to find out what a group of students think about the goal or objectives of a particular language program (teaching using and not using KWL strategy) as well as about its tests, materials, teaching, and administration… (2) Judgment survey to obtain the view of participants (only samples). Students were asked to judge the effectiveness of a language program's objectives and materials in terms of how useful or difficult they were, how necessary they are to future language use, especially to passive students. The purpose is to encourage passive students to be more active in improving reading comprehension skill, as well as how they are to learn. Students will simply be providing their judgment. Instruments used to collect data of the survey are selfadministered questionnaire and group administered questionnaire.

Formative Evaluation for Survey Research and Experimental Research i. Videotape
The class filmed to observe the atmosphere of the control and the experimental group showed that the atmosphere of the experimental groups were more interesting and exciting, while the control groups were still bored with the reading class (Tran Thi Thanh Dieu, 2013) [3].
ii. Colleagues' observation and criticizing After attending the class to observe, some colleagues reported what they observed and some of them filled the questionnaire or checked against the class observation checklist. Their report also proved the success of KWL strategy although somewhat the students were not so natural as being expected, just in some control groups and Experimental groups to let some other groups act naturally without other surveys (Tran Thi Thanh Dieu, 2013) [3].
iii. Questionnanire analysis Part A + C for the whole population, Part B + D for only experimental group PART A: Student profile for the whole population 90 students (Q1-5)) have to provide the nationality, age, institution, experience of learning English and level learnt. The result indicates that students' background knowledge and experience of learning English are nearly the same. Although students' background knowledge can be different because of their own situation (family, interaction context, lifestyle, standard of living etc.,). Their English background knowledge are usually the same because most of them have studied English from secondary school to high school and the last 2 years at the University with the same program for ESP students (ESP = English for specific purposes   Some of the students felt difficult in Personal response (30), Straightforward brainstorming (29), and Thinking of the more general categories of information likely to be encountered when reading (31). Only 13 students (about 28%) felt very difficult in Selecting a key concept for the brainstorming and 1 (about 2%) found difficult in Relating the prior knowledge to what is being read. This reason indicates that although our strategy (KWL) has a certain success, there was something with the way we train them the skill for the first step (K) in the KWL strategy or the problem happened with the time we spent for training them. This makes us think about the research that should be done to find out the better way to train students the skills for (K) step or the perfect success can be gained in longer -term.  10 Students (about 22%) found difficult in most of the activities (Raising question, Developing personal commitment, Discerning the match between your expectation and the actual construction of the text) showing that students can identify clearly the purpose of their reading, the factor make reading process more successful. Specially, the atmosphere was more interesting as well as the passive habit of students was reduced. 30 students (about 66%) found difficult in finding disagreement and gap in information. This reason is so reasonable because in this step the teacher's role is central. She or he must highlight their disagreement and gaps in information and help students raise questions that focus their attention and energize their reading. Only 5 students (about 11%) found difficult in Discussion showing a little success in Group work, the majority of this W step.  10 students (about 22%) found difficult in Writing down what you learned from reading because their writing and speaking skill were not very good due to their passive habit. The rest showed that their reading comprehension increased.
Question 5. Which step do you consider the most difficult to you? Number from the most difficult one. a) K: What we know b) W: What we want to find out c) L: What we leaned and still need to learn d) Why? _______________________________________ Reason (Most difficult) Students had to volunteer but still had to rely on the teacher so much because it is not easy to select a key concept for the brainstorming that is specific enough to generate the kinds of information being pertinent to the reading. For this reason, the teacher's role in this phase is very important especially in the context of passive students.
Developing a personal commitment that guide the reading is not easy for passive students.
Writing down what they learned from reading is not easy for students because it needs the summarizing and criticizing skill.

Reason
They had opportunities to talk about what they think they know, to practise deep thinking This step helped students develop the students' own reasons for reading.
Group work, the majority of this step (W) made them interested and excited enough to forget the difficulty and the boring atmosphere.
Students had an opportunities of having their question answered or at least addressed.     Not good Very good According to the table above, the percentage of students who found teacher's direction of the KWL strategy not very good is 4.4% (0%+4.4%) in comparing with the 82.1% (26.6%+55.5%) students who found teacher's direction of the KWL strategy good and very good,. This number reminded teachers to improve the way to introduce and direct students to follow KWL, the key to succeed. The more students know how to follow and use this method, the more successful they are. From this trial, the time has come when teachers should find better ways to explain how to use this method.  The result indicates that the number of students who felt bored with reading in the control groups were more than in the experimental groups.

Reason
Reading can help them go deep into their own studying field, have more information.
Most students liked being able to speak in English.
They liked being able to understand English.
They are not required to write in English in the EFL context.
All students had the same thinking about the importance of the four skills.  According to the table above, in experimental groups, the percentage of students who were happy with the reading class is 77.7% (22.2%+55.5%) in comparing with the 11% (4.4%+6.6%) students who were not happy, showed that students' attitudes towards reading class after the KWL method was used, changed positively. That means this method (KWL) is suitable in the Vietnamese context where English is considered as a foreign language with little chance to practise and communicate in English..
To compare with the result of the control group, 66.6% were not happy and 8.8% were happy, we can also conclude that without using the KWL strategy, the students could not change their attitude towards reading.
Question 5: Which factors that led to the boring atmosphere in a reading class? Number your top two a) Teacher b) Students c) Text d) Teaching approach e) Other: _______________ Most of students stated that all factors above could lead to boring atmosphere in a reading class. However, the most important was the Teaching approach. With a good teacher, active students, interesting text, but follow a traditional way of reading such as first reading the text then being given vocabularies, grammar and answer the comprehension questions, the boring atmosphere can not be avoided. They also added some other factors that lead to the boring atmosphere in a reading class such as poor equipments, facilities, place of studying, motivation, and etcetera.
PART   According to the chart above, the percentage of students who had deep understanding about KWL strategy is 28.8% (26.6%+2.2%) compared with the 59.9% (17.7%+42.2%) of students who had little understanding, showed that what they did in class to make the reading time successful relied too much on the teacher. This result reminded me that although our strategy (KWL) has a certain success, there was something with the way we train students the skill for the steps (K,W,L) in the KWL strategy or the problem happened with the time we spent for training them. This makes us think about the research that should be done to find out the better way to train students the skills for (K,W,L) steps or this perfect success can be gained in a longer-term process.

Question 2: What will you do to prepare for a reading class and extra activity (using KLW)?
What they can do is trying to have a willing thinking to activate schemata, to discuss in pair or in-group as well as to be active and to participate in class. After every lecture, they will try to read more materials to fulfill their desires to know and to practise using this method in some nearly the same texts to compare.

Summative Evaluation for Experimental Research
The data of multiple choice & cloze test of the classes in the experimental group and control group was analyzed by using Microsoft Excel (Tran Thi Thanh Dieu, 2013) [3].   From the diagram above, the result of the three classes in the control group was nearly the same and lower than the result of the experimental group. It showed the effect of KWL strategy used to train the experimental group.

Evaluation of the Trial
From the test result and the questionnaire analysis, we have the conclusion as follow: i. The effect of KWL strategy To answer the question "Which step do you consider the most difficult to you?". 64% of the Experimetal group choose the Step "K". In this step, Students had to volunteer but still had to rely on the teacher so much because it is not easy to select a key concept for the brainstorming that is specific enough to generate the kinds of information that will be pertinent to the reading The second step W: (what they want to find out) is the time for students to think about what they already know of the topic and the general categories of information that should be anticipated, questions emerge. This step can help students improve their ability of making question, a way to participate.
KWL (a thinking-reading process) is the procedure that can be used with nonfiction selections at any grade level and in any content learning situation. This can help learners to access the knowledge of the topic they already have or make it appropriately available so that comprehension can occur.
All these reading activities help students' have more reasons for reading -reading to find answer to question that will increase their reservoir of knowledge on this topic.
With the discussion, students seemed to be more active and interested in the lesson. Group activity in the KWL strategy give student's natural atmosphere, free from the teacher-watching pressure, Step by step the passive students showed their self-confidence.
Having to find out what still needed to learn provides students purpose for further study, and make them feel enjoyable of reading, the main reason for activity during the reading lessons. As a result, some students could master the K step based on the title of the reading text to activate the prior knowledge themselves. Therefore, they were not afraid of reading anymore and did extra activity in reading outside the classroom to help them improve their reading skill effectively. This is one of the most suitable for the passive students. In other words, this strategy makes students feel interested in reading, especially reading in a foreign language because this is one of the best ways to activate schemata, being suitable to a current perspective on reading comprehension: the reading process is an interaction between a reader's prior knowledge and the information encoded in the text. The interactive model has recently been studied under the rubric of schema theory. This theoretical framework emphasizes that the reader is an active participant who can contribute to the construction of meaning. When reading, students interpret the text in light of their previous knowledge and simultaneously modify their original schemata as new information is learned. And as a result, teachers promised to use this strategy because of its advantages.
ii. Students' thinking of KWL & Students' attitude towards reading class Although students found some difficulties in doing the three steps K-W-L such as personal response, relating the prior knowledge to what is being read, relating the prior knowledge to what is being read, etcetera (in K step) and Discussion Raising question, Developing personal commitmen, etcetera (In W step) as well as Writing down what they learned from reading, judging the kinds of variation existing in different texts, pursue your own quest for knowledge, etcetera (In L step), they showed their interest in this strategy and as a result, their attitude towards reading class had some change. Maybe the reading class is not the time of sleeping anymore and the most important result gained is the usefulness of the knowledge provided to students from the interest in reading. Useful people with enough knowledge can raise the country to a higher position in the world.
In other words, Formative and Summative evaluation (Brown, 1989) can give an acceptable conclusion of the innovation through "The Case Study Model", the third model of Evaluation (cf., Lawton 1980), described by Adelman, Jenkins and Kemmis (1976), and Yin (1984) as "Strong in reality", gives readers chance to make judgment for themselves through numerical data such as the comparison of test score illustrated by chart (p. 239) [9]. This kind of evaluation helps to prevent from the danger of subjectivity made by using only observational data gathered by the evaluator as participants-observer in the illuminative model. With this evidence, the innovation can reliably prove its little success, to encourage teachers to use KWL strategy teaching reading comprehension.
iii. Five core characteristics of innovation (Markee 1997, p. 78) [6]. a) Relative advantage: The project is a step to improve the innovator's ability in teaching as well as in their experience. b) Compatibility: It is not too different or too similar to current approach because it was developed based on four main skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing. c) Complexity: This innovation is not too difficult because it is just a kind of self-improving trial. d) Trialability: The trial was checked by comparison of evaluation test score of the participants and a survey was conducted through observation and questionnaire. e) Observability: This trial was observed easily by colleagues and others but the members of the other Departments can not take part in completely because of the difficulty in understanding English, they just play the role of consulting in the specific field. f) Explicitness: The reasons for the change are very clear because this is the rational need for the students studying English as ESP (English for specific purposes). They need knowledge of their own field that usually gained through reading, not only general knowledge. Therefore, reading is the main skill in their learning process. g) Form: This innovation is tangible because it is a change in teaching approach. h) Adaptability: The steps in the trial can be changed if someone has good ideas. i) Feasibility: This innovation can be done because what the teacher do is just making questions to activate students' schema. However, the difficulty is which question should be asked to be successful in activating students' schema and making the atmosphere exciting. In addition, this project applied some techniques for developing a teacher. Teachers can improve themselves through the innovation in sharing with colleagues and through cooperation in checking the trial -discuss with one another, getting feedback from colleagues. The reason is that this approach was tried out by the colleagues with feedback given as well as feedback from students through some informal interview or questionnaire to have the self-appraisal by studying the other approach and teaching, comparing with their own and having comment for themselves through action research to solve the classroom problems.

Principles of the Innovation
Moreover, this innovation somewhat followed the nine general principles about the management of curricular innovation, extracted from the CATI project (Markee, N, 1997, p. 174) [6].
i. Principle 1: Curricular innovation is a complex phenomenon. The innovation of language teaching from the society, completed with a different educated approaches, might therefore have complex effects, which, Holly argues, as 'the social vehicle, par excellence, of imperialism -old-style and new-style' (ibid.:11) (Holliday 1994, p. 98) [1].
The second difficulty is economic. Although the purpose of the innovation is to make a change in the way of teaching reading comprehension, it did not have much support from the leaders. Moreover, the Vietnamese culture also leads to some difficulties. Almost Vietnamese teachers are very passive with the Eastern mind. They are not interested much in the change and the innovation is usually considered as too crazy, so they are not willing to accept the trial.
To make the innovation successful, I, in the supervisory position, tried my best to developed secondary innovation "to enhance the transformation capacity of the host organization to support primary innovation" (Markee, N, 1997, p. 172) [6], such as instrument for observating the class atmosphere, knowledge of strategy and of statistical analysis.
ii. Principle 2: The principal job of charge agents is to effect desired changes After teaching several years and exploring Vietnamese student's difficulties in learning reading comprehension, the charge agent found the KLW is one of the suitable ways to improve students' situation. This strategy can not only help students overcome their current difficulty in learning reading but also make them feel interested in reading, especially in their extra activities leading to extensive reading, a step to succeed. Moreover, the charge agent tried to provide a strong leadership as a consultant rather than a manager to explain clearly why and how to use the KLW strategy.
iii. Principle 3: Good communicating among project participants is a key leading to successful curricular innovation. Formal communication networks among participants through different resource to communicate were carried out, such as some staff meetings for discussion, advice and observation checklist. Email address of the innovator was given to collect ideas, evaluation after the trial. Electronic mail lists were used to give "multiple opportunities in different forums throughout the association with a project or discuss how our professional development activities not only benefit ourselves but also feed into the development of a program's curriculum" (Markee, N, 1997, p. 175) [6].
iv. Principle 4: The successful implementation of educational innovations is based on a strategic approach to managing change. Strategic approach to managing change with long-term aims was used because this innovation has a goal of changing student passive to active habit and no one can deny that it is not easy to change one's habit. As a Chinese and Vietnamese proverb says ' Gian sôn deã ñoåi baûn tính khoù dôøi" generally translated into English like this " the King of the country can be replaced easily but changing someone's personality is very difficult". Therefore the strategic approach used in this innovation has a certain good result, due to the combination of identifying the problem and consulting with potential adopters to identify potential solution, to clarify misunderstanding and solicit suggestions for improvement. The second step helps to modify the prosed solution in light of feed back receive from potential adopters. Arranging for the development of what supporting the solution resources are necessary was carried out in the third step. And the solution on a trial basis was implemented and evaluated in the fourth and fifth step (Markee, N, 1997, p. 176) [6].
v. Principle 5: Innovation is an inherently messy, unpredictable business vi. Principle 6: It always takes longer to effect change than originally anticipated vii. Principle 7: There is a high likelihood that charge agents' proposals will be misunderstood. (For Principle 5, 6, 7) This is the situation of selfimprovement, so I decided and carried out the innovation to play the role of change agent as well as adopters. Therefore and as a result there was no misunderstanding and no different view as to what change should be implemented and how it should be done. However, this innovation could not be prevented from "messy, unpredictable business" (Markee, N, 1997, p. 178) [6] and confront with the doubt and resist of colleagues who played the role of observers and training students the skill of activating schema as well as making them accustomed to and interested in the steps of KWL strategy. Therefore, although the data was analyzed to give the clear findings, the innovation really needs more time to effect change. In fact the trial took longer than originally anticipated because of the questionnaire collected stage even though the project framework matrix was used to lay out what change are desired, identify how the change is to be evaluated, specify when evaluations are to occur (Markee, N, 1997, p. 178) [6].
viii. Principle 8: It is important for implementers to have a stake in the innovations they are expected to implement. As mentioned above, this is the self-improvement so first, I'm an implementer myself. I have a clear idea of what it is and believe it to be feasible as well as it addresses a real need. However, my hope is to encourage other teachers to have the same thinking with me as well as to have motivation to use this strategy: KWL, in teaching.
ix. Principle 9: It is important for change agents to work through opinion leaders, who can influence their peers. Opinion leaders were worked through to have the effective contribution to the diffusion of innovation.

Reliability of the Innovation
a) The self-administered questionnaire was used by mailing out and filled out by participants in their own home (i.e., they are self-administered) and then returned by mail to make sure that they are not influenced by any factors such as teacher or classmates attention. b) By using group-administered questionnaire, the students was captive audience and felt obliged to fill out the questionnaire (giving a high return rate). Moreover, I could be present to explain any ambiguities as they arise and I knew exactly what conditions existed when questionnaires were filled out. c) Validity: (internal and external validity) i. To prevent from anything that happens to the subjects, other intended treatments, only one strategy is used. No history, so one of the internal validity is gained. ii. There is no "testing effect" (practice reflects) on the result of the experiment because I did not use the same test for pre-test and post-test. The first test I used is just the test for choosing population. The result of the experiment was evaluated by only one set of tests (multiple-choice and cloze test) that was done only one time and the conclusion gained from the comparison between the control and the experimental group that were at the same level before doing experiment. iii. The research also gained the interaction of selection biases because I tried the treatment on the three sources of population. It can prevent from the fact that a particular population may cause the treatment to be effective where it may not be in another population. d) Reliability: (internal and external reliability) i. From the literature review, research about something relating to schema had been done with nearly the same result to prove the effect of the KWL strategy. ii. Some colleagues were invited to remark the tests and gave the same score because the tests were multiple choice and cloze test with the provided answer keys (They play a role of independent researchers, on reanalyzing the data and come to the same conclusion). e) The measuring instruments were designed with care without ambiguity and large scope concepts. f) The questionnaire, test content is clear, the rubric or instructions are clear too. This may lead to reliable data, because I had the drafts of my instruments checked by my colleagues and they could answer the questions in the questionnaire correctly. g) Ethnical consideration: i. The privacy of the research subjects were protected.
ii. The control group and the experimental group were informed that they were going to participate in the research without being told who were taught by a new method to prevent from their negative feeling. iii. Ethnical approval was given by the leaders of the institution where the research were being done. h) Mixed type of research design (from Grotjabn 1987, pp. 56-60) [10] was used with quasi-experimental design to answer the first research question: "Does KWL method help passive students improve their Reading comprehension skill?" by using treatment (KWL strategy) to teach students with test result compared through statistical analysis of quantitative data (Test score) that made the research more objective. Besitde that, the subjective factor were given from a kind of qualitative research through the interpretive analysis of the questionnaire in the survey to answer the second and third research question: "What are the students' thinking of the KWL method?" and "Are there any changes in students' attitudes towards Reading class after the KWL method was used?".

Limitation of the Research a)
Researcher expectancy: Because of my strongly belief in the effect of the KWL strategy, I could not be equal when giving marks. To prevent from this, I had to ask some colleagues to re-score and compare the 2 results. b) Intervening variables can appear to have effects on the results, that may lead to the situation that any difference discovered in the score of Method A (without using KWL strategy) and Method B (using KWL strategy) were caused by an unanticipated intervening variable rather than the Method itself. For instance, the teacher of the method B was just a better teacher than the teacher of the control group. Thererfore, to prevent from this case, I, myself was the only one teacher who taught both kinds of participants: control group and experimental group. To keep the natural atmosphere, both the control groups and the experimental group did not know the strategy used in the trial. However, this case of intervening variable sometimes can appear: my feeling: because of my admiration of the KWL strategy, I might do the better job for the experimental group. Recognizing the problem, I always reminded myself not to make this mistake, but it could appear unconsciously during the lesson when I completely concentrate on my lecture. c) Problem that might appear when using selfadministered questionnaire: i. They often had very low return rate.
ii. They must be completely self-explanatory because the further clarification is not possible. d) Hawthorn effect: When experiment is used to research people, they often act in complex and unexpected ways that are beyond the parameters of experimental hypothesis. Experimental exactitude, which might require controlled conditions, tends to make people behave self-consciously or unnaturally. e) Self-rating: People want to be honest burn effect but some time they aren't completely honest. Questionnaires without having to write the name can reduce the problem if the reason is to be afraid of the teacher. However, this problem can happen if the reason is to please the teacher or trying not to make the teacher disappointed when students have some bad comments. f) The tape recording led to time-consuming to transcribe and the presence of machine off-putting. g) Although the strategy (KWL) has a certain success, there was something with the way to train students the skill for the first step (K) in the KWL strategy. Moreover, the problem happened with the time we spent for training students and most of them said that they could follow the teacher, use KWL in the reading class under teacher's direction. However, they do not understand much about all the steps as well as they were not accustomed to using this method. As a result, they could not have give their opinion of improving the KWL strategy. This makes us think about spending more time for the trial or carrying out a new project to find out the better way to train students how to use the 3 steps (K-W-L) effectively.

Conclusion
This case study of innovation through action research to introduce change based on changing from traditional way to a kind of communicative approach to teach reading comprehension in class., has finally gained a little success. The trial methodology was described through 5 -step innovation, starting with (1) Discovering problem, and analyzing reasons; (2) Choosing A suitable strategy for trial; (3) The Preparation for implementing the strategy; (4) The Implementing the innovation and monitoring its progress; (5) The analysis of findings and Evaluating the innovation. Mainly using Problem-solving model with a Normative reeducative strategy, it is a kind of selective contact change, which can be the illustration for the process of doing a research into the innovation in education.
Through the innovation, the necessity of the strategic approach, called treatment has been determined. To deal with the misunderstanding one another, the boring atmosphere, and the silence from students in a reading class, this small scale trial has proved the effect of a strategy: KWL, on passive students,, especially in Vietnam. Therefore, this innovation might hopefully be one of successful evidences to encourage teachers in Vietnam to carry out the educational innovation frequently.
Moreover, beside a little success gained, this innovation cannot be prevented from some limitations, called Researcher-expectancy, Intervening-variables, from-selfadministered questionnaire, Hawthorn effect, … detailedly analyzed above. As a result, from this study it is concluded that more time should be given to the training process of this new strategy. In addition, more researches should be done to find out how to use this strategy effectively.
Last but not least, one of the most important purposes gained is to train students how to use this strategy for their own extra reading activity outside the classroom. Therefore, with the detailed lesson plans applying KWL strategy as well as data analysis of both survey and experimental research in the article by Tran Thi Thanh Dieu (PhD.), title "Trying K-W-L Strategy on Teaching Reading Comprehension to Passive Students in Vietnam". International Journal of Language and Linguistics USA. ISSN 2330-0221, 2013 [3]., this trial once again determine the advantages and the effect of this KLW strategy in Vietnamese context. Therefore, hopefully, this research will be one way of motivating teachers to use K-W-L strategy as well as frequently carry out the innovation to solve student's problems.
To sum up, following the proverb: "Seeing is believing", this innovaation has sucessfuly proved the effect of KWL strategy used in the trial of the innovation, as quoted One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it -You have no certainty, until you try.