VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES &&& DESIGNING PROFESSIONALLY ORIENTED COMMUNICATIVE SITUATIONS FOR CUSTOMS OFFICER[.]
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -&&& - DESIGNING PROFESSIONALLY- ORIENTED COMMUNICATIVE SITUATIONS FOR CUSTOMS OFFICERS IN THE NORTHWEST BORDER AREA n tn (Nghiên cứu n n p n o n ộ u n qu n ot pp u v n M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Major : English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 HANOI, 2019 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -&&& - DESIGNING PROFESSIONALLY- ORIENTED COMMUNICATIVE SITUATIONS FOR CUSTOMS OFFICERS IN THE NORTHWEST BORDER AREA n tn (Nghiên cứu n n p n o n ộ u n ot pp qu n u v n M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Major : English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 up rv sor r n h HANOI, 2019 u n ng u n DECLARATION I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “ s n n prof ss on ll - oriented communicative situations for customs officers in the Northwest border t ” is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master of Arts at Vietnam National University, Hanoi and that this thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or tertiary institution Hanoi, June 2019 Vu Thi Nga i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this study would have been impossible without the enthusiastic assistance of many special and wonderful people First of all, I would like to express my great thankfulness to my supervisor, Dr Le Thi Hong Duyen for her extremely helpful advice and guidance as well as her constant support during all stages of the study I also would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr Huynh Anh Tuan – Dean of the Post Graduate Studies Department, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University for his suggestions and support so that I could complete my thesis in time My profound thanks also go to all staff in Ma Lu Thang border gate and Lai Chau and Lao Cai customs office for their tremendous support in the collection of data and information for my study This study has also been sponsored by North West Project 2018 Therefore, I would like to send my sincere thanks to the board administrators and staff of the Project for their valuable support My appreciation also goes to my relatives as well as my colleagues whose understanding and sharing is invaluable to me in completing my thesis Finally, this thesis is the product of my long-term study, so I wish to express my acknowledgement to other individuals who have indirectly contributed to the completion of this thesis To all these people, I hope that the achievement of the thesis will be favorable enough to satisfy their expectations ii ABSTRACT In the context of integration and globalization, English communication at work has become an essential demand for occupations Among them, customs officers at the border gate also have opportunities to communicate with foreigners However, there seems to be a lack of studies regarding designing English materials or courses for customs officers Under initial exploration of such research gap, the researcher conducted this study with the purpose to design the professional oriented communicative situations for the customs officers at the Northwest border gate This study is conducted with the participation of 25 customs officers at Ma Lu Thang, an important border gate of Lai Chau province In this research, four main data collection instruments are employed, namely questionnaires, observation, semi-structured interviews, and document review Besides, the researcher also strictly followed the four main steps in designing communicative situation including needs analysis, production, evaluation and adaptation As a result, 50 specialized English communicative situations were created according to 12 working domains Hopefully, this study yields in a practical and useful tool for customs officers and also makes a significant contribution in confirming the reliability of the major steps in the process of ESP materials development iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CNP : Communicative Needs Professor C.O : Customs Officer EAP : English For Academy Purposes EOP : English For Occupational Purposes ESP : English For Specific Purposes LSA : Learning Situation Analysis NA : Needs Analysis PSA : Present Situation Analysis TSA : English For Target Situation Analysis iv LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figures Figure1.1 Procedures of materials development (Tomlinson, 2012) 16 Figure 1.2 Adapted framework of procedures for materials development .16 Figure 4.1 Difficulties in learning and training professional English .30 Tables Table 1.1 TSA Framework (Songhori, 2008, p 8) 11 Table 3.1 Data collection procedures 24 Table 4.1 The needs for communication and mastery of specialized English 27 Table 4.2 Information about the personnel working at Ma Lu Thang border gate 28 Table 4.3 Participants’ agreement on the use of main topics for “English professionally oriented communicative situations for customs officers working at the border gate” 32 Table 4.4 Interview results of English communicative situations’suggestions 34 Table 4.5 List of English professionally oriented communicative situations for customs officers working at the border gate .35 v TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES v TABLE OF CONTENTS vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the study Research aims and research questions .3 Scope of the study Methods of the study .4 Significance of the study .4 Organization of the thesis .4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 English for occupational purposes 2.2 Needs Analysis 2.2.1 Target situation analysis 10 2.2.2 Present needs analysis .11 2.3 ESP materials development .12 2.3.1 ESP materials 12 2.3.2 Principles of materials development .14 2.3.3 Procedures for materials development 15 2.4 Previous studies on ESP materials development 16 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 18 3.1 An overview of the research site and the participants 18 3.1.1 Research site 18 3.1.2 The participants .20 vi 3.2 Data collection 20 3.2.1 Data collection instruments .20 3.2.2 Data collection procedures 24 3.2.3 Data analysis 25 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 26 4.1 Communicative needs of customs officers at the border gate of Northwest region 26 4.1.1 The needs of English spoken communication .26 4.1.2 The sections where English is required 28 4.1.3 Difficulties of customs officers in using English at work 29 4.2 Popular professional- oriented communicative situations 32 4.2.1 Questionnaire data: 32 4.2.2 Interview data : 33 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION .38 Summary of the research results .38 Implications of the study 39 Limitation of the study 39 Future research directions 40 REFERENCES 42 APPENDICES I APPENDIX I I APPENDIX II V APPENDIX III XII vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study Vietnam is on the strongly international integration with lots of opportunities and challenges, which requires the social workforce to attain qualification It means that employers need the proper proficiency in English language to make ends meet for internationally integrated demand In recent years teaching English language has been more and more improved because many activities are organized effectively to keep learners active and self-confident in communicatingEnglish People are focusing on developing English communicative skills in the work environment to get better opportunities for promotion Therefore, in the Northwest provinces, Lang Son, Lao Cai, Ha Giang, designing English materials for border gate customs officers who communicate with foreigners and read the documents is also important since it became a useful device for trade, selling, tourism in the area containing the economic border gate zone The English communication skills in the border zone can clearly play an integral part in exchanging the defense cooperation or trading commodities tourism and so on The skillful lack of qualification in English for mutual communication creates misunderstandings leading to conflicting unexpectedly Moreover, there have been few specialized English course books and suitable learning materials for customs officers to enhance their professionally oriented communication In general, the advantages of practicing professionally oriented situations may be fully utilized by customs officers to succeed in communicating with foreign partners in the border gate, so the customs officers not feel embarrassed to communicate with foreigners as tourists and merchants The Northwest Program is the concretization of the strategic policy of the Vietnamese Party and State: considering Science and Technology as the primary national policy to promote to the highest degree the intellectual resources and create an impetus for the development of knowledge-based economy in the Northwest different learners, the materials writers should select or adapt the materials to different aspects of authenticity In terms of the purpose for using materials, Dudley-Evans and St John (1998) highlights four main reasons namely (1) as a source of language, (2) as learning support; (3) for motivation and stimulation and (4) for reference Sharing the same point of view, Hyland (2006) also proposes four principal functions of ESP materials, which are (1) to assist learners’ understanding of language use, (2) to serve as models with representative samples of correct language use in different contexts of work and study, (3) enhance learners’ creativity, planning and engagement; (4) to provide reference source of materials In another review of key aspects of ESP materials selection and design, Lesiak- Bielawska (2015) highlights that the main objective of ESP materials is “to expose learners to real language as it is used in a range of professional and/or academic settings” (p 5) Apart from that, Tomlinson (2016) adds that “ideally materials should be developed for learning rather than for teaching” (p.2) It can be inferred from the above points that any materials for both ELT and ESP should be designed with certain purpose and based on underlying principles The following section will clearly present the points 2.3.2 Principles of materials development When mentioning about materials development, Alan Maley (2016) specially highlights the background of materials and states that “materials not exist in a vacuum They are part of the whole context of language learning, including the philosophical and belief-systems of stakes holders” (p.11) Such proposition means when developing materials, the writers/designers should take the language using context of the materials into account In a review of Hidalgo et al (1995), some principled approaches to materials development were stated by some writers from South-East Asia based on their observation of the process of learners learning language Lateron, Tomlinson (1998) proposes 15 principles for materials development, which were built from the theories of language acquisition In his paper in 2009, Tomlinson once again 14 confirms some main principles underlying the development of materials He suggested that: “ materials should not be random recreations from repertoire nor craft clones of previously successful materials Instead, they should be coherent and principled applications of (1) theories of language acquisition and development; (2) principles of teaching; (3) our current knowledge of how the target language is actually used; (4) the results of systematic observation and evaluation of materials in use” ( omlinson, 2009, p.45) Based on such proposition and the proposed 15 principles, he strongly claims about the six important ones as follows: The materials should: · Expose the learners to language in authentic use · Help learners to pay attention to features of authentic input · Provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language toachieve communicative purposes · Provide opportunities for outcome feedback · Achieve impact in the sense that they arouse and sustain the learners’ curiosity and attention · Stimulate intellectual, aesthetic and emotional involvement (Tomlinson, 2009, p.46) Although different principles have been articulated, the aforementioned ones seem to drive the development of any materials 2.3.3 Procedures for materials development Similar to the principles of materials development, there are also a number of reported procedures for developing materials According to Tomlinson (2012), materials development is both “a field of study and a practical undertaking” (p.144) As “a field of study”, it focuses on the procedures of the design, implementation and evaluation of language teaching materials Whereas, as “a practical undertaking”, it studies the production, evaluation and adaptation of the materials 15 Figure 1.1 Procedure of materials development (Tomlinson, 2012) Since the purpose of this study is to design professionally oriented communicative situations for customs officers, this should be identified as a practical understanding, rather than a field of study However, the procedures suggested above seem to be the overall guideline for materials writers to follow Moreover, it did not mention the needs analysis stage, which is also very important to ESP materials Therefore, in this study, the researcher chose to modify the framework and conducted materials development according to the following stages: Figure 1.2 Adapted framework of procedures for materials development 2.4 Previous studies on ESP materials development Since English for occupational purposes has become a recent trend in teaching and learning English, it is understandable that a lot of studies related to professionally oriented courses and materials development have been conducted Regarding ESP materials development, most studies found in the literature reported about the importance of needs analysis in designing ESP courses and materials which meet the needs of specific groups of learners such as nursing, engineering, business, law and so on 16 For example, in the hope of designing a speaking syllabus and textbook for nursing students who are going to work in hospitals overseas, Sismiati, Latief and Adnan (2012) conducted two needs surveys with the first one at five nursing schools in Indonesia and the second needs analysis at three hospitals in New Zealand With the in-depth analysis of needs from the perspectives of different stakeholders, the authors identified what should be included in their coursebook, which satisfies their learners In another context of Saudi Arabia, a group of researchers (Javid et al, 2015) also conducted a comprehensive needs analysis research project including the opinion of 794 students and 40 faculty members from different medical colleges in this country The data collected questionnaires, interviews and observations were triangulated to shed light on the genuine needs for medical students From such holistic needs analysis, they built up the course content and successfully piloted the course at one college From their study, they strongly advocated that a comprehensive needs analysis is needed for designing in-house teaching materials Also regarding the use of needs analysis in designing an ESP coursebook, Chen (2008) reported on a study conducted with a group of architects and civil engineers in China In this study, the trainers who were asked to design a coursebook for English training program for such construction professionals, investigated and analyzed the needs of the trainees and used the results from needs analysis to build up suitable materials for the training course The same focus on needs analysis while developing ESP materials can be seen in many other studies (Ibrahim, 2015; Hussein, 2016; Widijantie & Handayani, 2018) Interestingly, such studies mentioned above mostly focus on developing or designing learning materials for ESP courses, i.e to use in ESP classes rather than in practical situations of a workplace Therefore, there is a lack of studies focusing on designing materials for professionals to use at work In the search of studies on ESP material development for customs officers in both local and global contexts, it seems that this group of learners has not been paid 17 much attention Studies aimed at this type of target learners seem to be rarely evident in the literature With the big gap identified in the literature as mentioned above, it calls for the necessity of designing materials for customs officers as a reference and a resource of learning on themselves at their workplace CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This chapter is stated with the purpose of discussing the methodology used to implement the research after reviewing a theoretical basis for the study in the previous part The researcher describes the methodology investigating the English communicative needs of customs officers while doing their duties in the border area and designing the most popular communicative situations related to their profession at Ma Lu Thang border gate in Phong Tho district, Lai Chau province The nature and the desired results of the proposed study entailed the choice of research tools such as observation, questionnaire, semi-structured interview and document review The chapter consists of the main contents, namely, an overview of the research setting, the participants and data collection and analysis methods 3.1 An overview of the research site and the participants 3.1.1 Research site Mentioning Lai Chau, it can be thought of a Northwest border province of the country, which is rather attractive because it is characterized as distinctive features of nature and geographical site Lai Chau has a natural area of 9,068 square kilometers with a population of about 471.000, consisting of Lai Chau city and seven different districts, over 450 km southeast of Hanoi It is bordered to China's Van Nam province to the North and Northwest, Dien Bien province to the west, and Lao Cai and Yen Bai provinces to the east and southeast, and Son La province to the south It is the neighborhood of 18 Van Nam province, China that brings certain benefits of economics as well as tourism for this mountainous one like Lai Chau The border distance between Lai Chau and China stretches 265,165km Four border districts of Lai Chau including in Phong Tho, Sin Ho, Nam Nhun and Muong Te are contiguous to three border districts of China's Van Nam province such as Kim Binh, Giang Thanh and Luc Xuan Therefore, Lai Chau province has many unmarked line, trail as well as opening and especially one customs department at Ma Lu Thang national border gate in Phong Tho district with the purpose of ensuring the execution of State provisions on customs procedures, inspection and customs supervision of exports, imports and temporary imports for re-exports, human and vehicle transit at border crossings When the State's policies on trade, investment, export and import tax come into force, together with the entrance of Vietnam Customs into the World Customs Organization, which has led to the activities of Vietnamese Customs in general and Dien Bien Customs in particular developing into a new phase The regime of import-export management has been changed fundamentally, commercial activities in the province of Dien Bien, Lai Chau and Son La are flourishing with emergence of various types of import and export such as investment, trading, temporary import Moreover, Lai Chau is blessed with the captivating poetic landscapes by the Mother Nature, such as O Quy Ho mountain pass, Pu Sam Cap cave, Love waterfall and many distinctively cultural features of twenty ethnic minorities Besides, Lai Chau is beneficiary thanks to the expressway from Quang Dong to Van Nam province, China through Viet Nam with starting point from Quang Ninh- Hai Phong- Ha Noi- Lao Cai The expressway linking to Lai Chau is on duty, which creates golden chances for commercial exchange as well as tourism because Lai Chau is an attractive medial point between Sa Pa- a famous destination and Dien Bien- a historical site As a result, Ma Lu Thang border gate is also a center of commercial exchange and a destination for tourists because it is only 20km far away from route 4D connecting route 12 leading to Dien Bien province Obviously, 19 customs officers in Ma Lu Thang border gate have the advantages as well as challenges to meet the needs of work In brief, by the above strengths, both Vietnam and China have proposed Ma Lu Thang border gate considered as an importantly international border gate 3.1.2 The participants With a variety of advantages of a border-gate province, customs officers need necessary skills as well as qualifications to meet workplace requirements, especially in the globally economic integration It is important for the customs officers to obtain required certificates or English communicative skills for the professional customs in performing customs officers’ duties Thus, the researcher aims to explore how customs officers describe or feel about specific communicative situations in English language in order to easily assess the impact of English language in a particularly professional customs workplace appropriately Moreover, the participants may need necessary materials such as professionally oriented communicative situations, from which the participants can master relevant vocabulary to better their tasks The total number of customs officers at Ma Lu Thang border gate in Phong Tho district, Lai Chau province consists of twenty-five participants This border-gate agency is divided into five administrative departments such as the border guards, customs office, economic department, quarantine board and permanent immigration crew The administrative department of customs office only consists of six members in particular 3.2 Data collection 3.2.1 Data collection instruments The four main instruments utilized in the collection of the data for this study are document review, observation, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews These data instruments complemented properly to gain the purposes of the study 3.2.1.1 Document review 20 In this study, the researcher used document review as one of the main instruments to facilitate the production of communicative situations Some major contents and questions in the designed situations are compiled according to a list of frequently asked items provided by a department of customs administration In addition, several situations are collected based on the contents of the book “English for custom training materials” published by Vietnam Customs School, which contains a variety of specialized vocabulary and specific fields of customs sector enabling the officers to perform their duties efficiently at the border-gate areas However, there is a truly scarce of customs documents in the book-market and the pamphlets of customs procedures as well Even in Vietnam Customs School, there is not any officially English specialized professors or teachers in regarding to the customs procedure, mainly customs officers with high-level English qualification are utilized to work as teachers The coursebook “English for customs training” published by Vietnam Customs School in August 2017 is a main material which is not communicative situations related to the customs procedure In addition to that, the websites of the Provincial Customs Administrations and the General Department of Vietnam Customs are also utilized as useful reference sources It gives the researcher a chance to acknowledge the perspectives of situation-based customs procedures as well as possible suggested solutions supporting of designing the dialogues 3.2.1.2 Observations According to the sixth edition “Research Method in Education” by Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison (2007), “the observational research is defined as the method of viewing and recording the actions and ongoing behaviors of participants” In this study, the researcher observed the customs officers performing their duties with their partners such as merchants, people and tourists as well as the customs environment From the collected data, the research attains the full investigation for the specialized domains and situations that the participants have to cope with in their profession In addition to that, the researcher also expects to know more supplementary possibilities related to the customs procedures 21 Through the observation combining with the questionnaire's feedback, the researcher obviously finds out some of these specialized plot situations and understand more precisely the popular English language communicative situations related to their profession, which are utilized in customs officers’ ongoing performance At the same time, it is an observed fact that the customs officers working at the border gate have trouble in communicating the popular dialogues related to the customs procedures in many various situations 3.2.1.3 Questionnaire The questionnaire was used as the first instrument (see Appendix I) It is an obvious fact that questionnaires save time and effort for both researchers and participants because Gillham (2000) assumes that a wide range of advantages of questionnaires can be listed as saving time and money, easy to get information from a lot of people very quickly It was employed since it is considered as a suitable instrument in collecting data in this study Moreover, the anonymity of the participants and all their confidential answers can encourage customs officers to share their points of view and learning experiences without any pressure Purposes of the questionnaire is namely to collect the customs officers’ needs in using English communicative situations of performing their duties at the border gates and to explore the possible situations regarding the twelve domains provided by the provincial customs administration The questionnaire was given to twentyfive participants in Ma Lu Thang border gate The questionnaire was designed with two parts, namely the personal information or the customs officers’ background, learning experience (Part 1: item from to 5) and the questions related to specialized fields as well as the customs officers’ major needs in using English communicative situations of performing their duties effectively at the border gates The second part consists of eight questions in order to get specific information about their English language training background, their current English proficiency, and occupational requirements regarding the use of English to communicate with foreigners at their workplace (from item to item 22 8) Before filling in the questionnaire, the participants were given a brief and clear explanation about the aim of the questionnaire It is the usage of the questionnaire that the researcher can clearly find out the English communicative needs of customs officers in performing their duties in the border area The collected data from this questionnaire give the answer to the first research question of the study 3.2.1.4 Interviews In terms of interview, it is a purposeful conversation between two or more people, requiring the interviewer to establish rapport, to ask concise and unambiguous questions, to which the interviewee is willing to respond and listen attentively (Saunders et al, 2009) Another significant factor that should be paid attention to is the friendly and pleasant atmosphere to encourage the respondents to express and share the information about the customs procedures and trade related documents In this research, semi-structured interviews (See Appendix II) are conducted to explore a deep insight into the research problem from the perspective of those customs officers after the researcher gained their permission along with the confirmation of interviews’ confidentiality By using semi-structured interview, the researcher can explore the participants’ ideas more deeply by asking questions and recording their answers at a time (Creswell, 2012) After selecting a list of common situations from the questionnaire responses and the document review, the researcher started to conduct the interview with six the participants in the customs department of Ma Lu Thang border gate in order to ask the possibly current situations and confirm the reliability and appropriateness of the chosen situations The dialogues on twelve domains’ situations were repeated similarly in the six interviews with six customs officers so as to explore the popular questions Based on the interview, the research created a list of themes, mainly the specialized questions relating to the twelve different fields and possibly some key suggestions to be covered as well At the same time, the researcher created a chance to acknowledge the current ways and problems of using the situation-based English 23 language for Customs Officers as well as suggested solutions The interviews were conducted in the form of informal recorded talks All of them are carried out in Vietnamese in the customs officers’ workplace in order to ensure that data were collected at the interviewees’ ease 3.2.2 Data collection procedures Utilizing the data collection instruments aforementioned, the researcher conducted the research according to the following procedures: Table 3.1 Data collection procedures Stages Data collection Instruments Outcomes 1.Needs Analysis - Questionnaire - Observation - Document review - Level of English proficiency of the participants - Their needs of using English at work - A list of common working domains Production - Semi-structured interviews - Document review - Suggestions for tentative communicative situations in details Evaluation - Feedback of linguistic experts - Feedback of customs specialists First draft of communicative situations Adaptation - Feedback of the customs officers Final communicative situations As displayed in the above table, firstly, in the stage of needs analysis, survey questionnaires were delivered to all participants at Ma Lu Thang border gate From the questionnaire responses, the researcher can identify the level of English proficiency of the customs officers and some other information about their needs of using English at work At the same time, observation in their real working environment helped the researcher to note down the common situations Also, the researcher utilized a list of frequently asked items provided by the provincial 24 customs administration As a result, a list of common communicative situations was produced In the second stage, the researcher interviewed six the customs officers of customs administration at Ma Lu Thang border gate in order to ask for their suggestions for proper or improper domains as well as their related situations Simultaneously, the customs officers can check if those officers used selected situations or not and explored possible interactions within each situation Moreover, the researcher also took advantage of the documents from the book entitled “English for custom training materials” compiled by Vietnam Customs School as well as the websites of different customs departments At the end of this phase, pilot communicative situations were created For the third stage of evaluation, the pilot situations were sent to linguistic experts and customs specialists in order to obtain their feedback for modification In the final stage, the modified version of the communicative situations was delivered to obtain final feedback from the customs officers at Ma Lu Thang border gate The study was implemented under the help of the customs officers at Ma Lu Thang border gate in Phong Tho district, Lai Chau province The procedures for data collection of the study were carried out in successive weeks 3.2.3 Data analysis In this research dissertation, the collected data from the differently wellcomplemented instruments were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively In particular, the questionnaires were analyzed by utilizing Excel in order to figure out the percentage of participants’ responses regarding different aspects in the survey Besides, the observed data, semi-structured interviews and documents analysis were interpreted qualitatively with the purpose of selecting and designing appropriate communicative situations 25 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS Based on the data collection and analysis procedures, the researcher managed to find out remarkably significant research findings helping answer the research questions identified at the beginning In this chapter, the research questions are revisited in order to shed light on the major findings of the study regarding the English communicative needs of customs officers in performing their duties in the border area, and popular communicative situations related to their profession, based on discussing the results from the four main stages including needs analysis, production, evaluation and adaptation 4.1 Communicative needs of customs officers at the border gate of Northwest region Tải FULL (70 trang): https://bit.ly/3J1I7vT Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net 4.1.1 The needs of English spoken communication At Ma Lu Thang border gate, the researcher contacted all the customs officers or called participants who always perform their daily duties there, in which the number of participants is twenty- five In terms of their English qualifications, only six participants receive the certificate A1 All the participants took part in the survey by responding to the questionnaires objectively In order to specify the needs of English communication of the customs officers at Ma Lu Thang border gate, the researcher delivered a questionnaire to them and arrived at their working place for observation All the items in the questionnaire are written in Vietnamese to be easily understood by the customs officers In case some of the participants may misunderstand the questions’meanings or have any difficulty, the researcher has provided them with the telephone numbers and email address to contact At the same time, the researcher also asks for some essential documents as well as how to contact them effectively and some other ways during the implementation of the survey Having observed the officers performing their duties at work, the researcher noted down that English was mostly used in their comprehension of the customs 26 procedure documents Some officers also had the chance to communicate with foreign customers This reflected the fact that English is currently used in their professional performance It is also demonstrated clearly in the below table: The detailed results are displayed in the following table with two specific questions in the questionnaire: Table 4.1 The needs for communication and mastery of specialized English Items Contents Answers English Chinese Yes Yes, but not Item 2.1 frequently No If yes, what specific purposes Communicate you use English for? with foreigners Give directions or noticeboard Item 2.2 Comprehend related documents If no, you think English is necessary for performing your Yes, of course Item 2.3 duties in the future when there are more opportunities for integration? Item What foreign languages are frequently used at the border gate? Do you need to use English in your current professional tasks? Participants (customs officers) 21/25 84% 25/25 100% 9/25 36% 12/25 48% 4/25 16% 10/25 40% 19/25 76% 21/25 84% 25/25 100% As mentioned in the table above, although Chinese is considered as a more widely used foreign language (100%), English is still regarded as a frequently used one (84%) Tải FULL (70 trang): https://bit.ly/3J1I7vT Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net In terms of English usage for professional purposes (Item 2), 21/25 participants confirmed their use of English, in which officers stated that they often used English at work and 12 people said that they also used English but not frequently Only officers claimed that they did not find chance to use English in their job However, those people agreed that English is necessary in the future (Item 2.3) For those who used English to fulfill their tasks, their purposes of English usage varied including communicating with foreigners (40%), giving directions and 27 notice boards (76%) and comprehending professionally concerned documents (84%) In the context of regional and international commercial exchanges as well as integration, the need of communicating specialized-English language fluently has become extremely essential for customs officers at the border gate of Northwest region In such working environment, many opportunities of trading activities keep ongoing among internal and external businessmen, tourists and customs officers Thanks to recognizing the importance of English language as a trading and exchange device in the working environment, the majority of those customs officers stated in the questionnaire that they have a great desire to master English as a means of communication for supporting daily tasks’ performance so as to improve working efficiency, partly contribute to border gate economic development in the future 4.1.2 The sections where English is required As mentioned before, the research has been conducted at Ma Lu Thang border gate in Phong Tho district, 50 kilometers from Lai Chau city, Lai Chau province Totally twenty-five participants work for different administrative offices in this border-gate agency such as the border guards, customs office, economic department, quarantine board and permanent immigration crew resolving immigration issues The number of officers working in each office is demonstrated in the table below: Table 4.2 Information about the personnel working at Ma Lu Thang border gate Administrative offices (number of officers) Officers Officers not using English using English Border guards (12) Customs office (6) Economic department (2) Quarantine board (2) Permanent immigration crew (3) 28 6811211 ... officers working in the region All mentioned above, the researcher chose ? ?designing professionally oriented communicative situations for customs officers in the northwest border gate” in the research... professionally oriented communicative situations for customs officers In order to achieve this aim, the following objectives are established including analyzing the needs of the customs officers in the Northwest. .. for the study in the previous part The researcher describes the methodology investigating the English communicative needs of customs officers while doing their duties in the border area and designing