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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** PHẠM THỊ TÂM DIFICULTIES IN MEMORIZING ESP VOCABULARY IN THE COURS[.]
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** PHẠM THỊ TÂM DIFICULTIES IN MEMORIZING ESP VOCABULARY IN THE COURSE BOOK “ENGLISH FOR FINANCE” FACED BY THE SECOND-YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THE ACADEMY OF FINANCE AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS ( Những khó khăn mà sinh viên năm thứ hai không chuyên tiếng Anh học viện tài gặp phải ghi nhớ từ vựng tiếng Anh chuyên ngành số giải pháp) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 602215 Ha Noi – 2012 z VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** PHẠM THỊ TÂM DIFICULTIES IN MEMORIZING ESP VOCABULARY IN THE COURSE BOOK “ENGLISH FOR FINANCE” FACED BY THE SECOND-YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THE ACADEMY OF FINANCE AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS ( Những khó khăn mà sinh viên năm thứ hai khơng chuyên tiếng Anh học viện tài gặp phải ghi nhớ từ vựng tiếng Anh chuyên ngành số giải pháp) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 602215 Supervisor: Le The Nghiep, M.A Ha Noi - 2012 z iv LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Tables: No Title Page Students‟ opinion on the language input 19 Students‟ opinion on their teachers‟ vocabulary teaching methods 21 Students‟ opinion on their own vocabulary learning 23 Students‟ vocabulary memorizing strategies used 24 No Title The comparison between used strategies and effective ones z Page 25 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AOF: Academy Of Finance EFL: English as a Second Language EOP: English for Occupational Purposes EAP: English for Academic Purposes ESP: English for Specific Purposes L2: second language C.O.D: cash on delivery S.W.I.F.T: Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications GHQ: General Headquarters LBO: leveraged buyout z vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Candidate‟s statement ……………………………………………………………………… i Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………… ii Abstract…………………………………………………………………………… iii List of tables and charts …………………………………………………… iv List of abbreviations………………………………………………………………………… v Table of contents…………………………………………………………………………… vi PART A: INTRODUCTION The rationale of the study The aims of the study .2 Research questions The scope of the Study The method of the Study The design of the Study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Vocabulary in second language learning and teaching 1.1.1 Definitions of vocabulary .3 1.1.2 The status of vocabulary in language teaching and learning 1.1.3 Main characteristics of vocabulary in business context 1.2 Vocabulary memorization .9 1.2.1 Memorization .9 1.2.2 Vocabulary memorizing 1.2.3 Factors afecting ESP vocabulary memorizing 11 1.2.3.1 Word related factors .11 1.2.3.2 Learner-s related factors 12 1.2.3.3 Teacher- related factors 13 1.2.3.4 Learning context .13 CHAPTER 2: THE INVESTIGATION 15 2.1 The context of teaching and learrning ESP vocabulary in “Englisf for Finance” at the AOF 15 2.1.1 A description of the course book and the syllabus .15 2.1.2 The second-year non-English major students 16 2.1.3 The teachers and their methods of teaching 17 z vii 2.2 Research methodology 17 2.2.1 Research questions 17 2.2.2 The participants 18 2.2.3 Data collection instruments .18 2.2.4 Data collection procedure 18 2.2.5 Data collection procedure 18 2.3 Data analysis and discussion 19 2.3.1 Discussion of the results 19 2.3.1.1 The results collected by questionnaire on the target language input .19 2.3.1.2 The results collected by questionnaire on the teachers’ vocabulary teaching methods 21 2.3.1.3 The results collected by questionnaire on students’ vocabulary learning 23 2.3.2 Major findings 29 2.4 Some suggested solutions .30 2.4.1 Material writers and curriculum developers .30 2.4.2 Teachers .30 2.4.3 Students 31 PART C: CONCLUSION .32 Conclusion .34 Limitations of the study 35 Suggestions for further study 35 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………I APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………………IV APPENDIX 1……………………………………………………………………………… V APPENDIX 2……………………………………………………………………………….VII APPENDI 3……………………………………………………………………………… VIII APPENDIX 4……………………………………………………………………………… XII APPENDIX 5…………………………………………………………………………… XIII APPENDIX 6…………………………………………………………………………… XVI z PART A: INTRODUCTION The rationale of the study More and more Vietnamese people are becoming aware of the importance of English, which is due to the increasingly global communications in the English language However, it is known that words play an indispensable role in human communication Without words, the language would be inane, just as a building cannot be constructed without bricks The methods for learning and teaching English vocabulary well are always heatedly discussed in Vietnam on purpose of helping teachers and students teach, learn and then acquire English vocabulary at an ease, for example, Quach Thi Mai (2007), Nguyen Thu Huong (2008) and many other authors It is still quite a problem Learners face difficulties in vocabulary learning in general and memorizing in particular Memorizing vocabulary has been discussed a lot in the foreign context, however, in Vietnam it is still a potential to exploit Many Vietnamese students experience considerable difficulties in learning vocabulary because of word nature, lack of time, learning strategies, motivation and so on Having worked with the course book “English for Finance” by Cao Xuan Thieu, the Financial Publishing House (2008) and examined many oral final tests of the secondyear non-English major students at the AOF for several years, the researcher has noticed a number of problems faced by students here These problems still exist in the process of learning ESP vocabulary when many of the students could not even give a simple answer or speak a simple sentence They find it hard to remember, to correctly pronounce and use vocabulary Many students confide to the researcher that they spend lots of time learning vocabulary but they can remember only few words they have learnt As a result, English vocabulary becomes very challenging and threatening for them in learning English for specific purposes at university These reasons urge the researcher to find out the difficulties in memorizing ESP vocabulary faced by the second-year non-English major students at the AOF and the possible solutions to help students improve their vocabulary memorization z 2 The aims of the study The study aims at finding out the difficulties in memorizing ESP vocabulary faced by the 2nd year non-English major students and then suggesting some solutions to help the learners memorize ESP vocabulary better Research questions The study is done to find out the answers for the two research questions: (1) What are the 2nd year non-English major students’ difficulties in memorizing ESP vocabulary in the textbook “English for Finance”? (2) What are the possible solutions to help the learners memorize ESP vocabulary better? The scope of the Study The study limits itself to the investigation of difficulties in memorizing ESP vocabulary faced by the second-year non-English major students at the AOF when working with the course book “English for Finance” by Cao Xuan Thieu and his colleagues at the English faculty of the AOF (2008) It also tries to seek for possible solutions to the current problems The method of the Study The study adopts the combination of both qualitative and quantitative research methods This means that all comments, findings and suggestions given in the thesis are based on firstly analyzing the results of questionnaire obtained from 100 second-year non-English major students at the AOF, secondly on analyzing the information gathering from formal interviews with 16 teachers from the English faculty of the AOF The design of the Study The study is composed of three parts The first part, Introduction, provides the rationale, aims, scopes, and method of the study, which offers readers an overview of how the research idea is generated, what its goals are, and what research methodology is adopted The second part, Development, is divided into two chapters The first chapter, Literature Review, provides the theoretical background for the study It focuses on the second language vocabulary learning, and some factors affecting vocabulary memorizing The second chapter, Investigation, is the main part of the study It reports the collection and analysis of the data and major findings of the study The last part, Conclusion, summarizes the findings, draws teaching implications, states the limitation of the research, and offers suggestions for further research z PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Vocabulary in second language learning and teaching 1.1.1 Definitions of vocabulary There have been different definitions of vocabulary Ur (1996) defined vocabulary as “the words we teach in the foreign language However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word: a compound of two or three words or multiword idioms” A similar definition from Richards and Platt (1992) is that vocabulary is “a set of lexemes, including words, compound words and idioms” Read (2000) believes that vocabulary is considered as an inventory of individual words, with their associated meanings From different definitions of vocabulary, it indicates that vocabulary is “the total number of words in a language” (Hornby, 1995) 1.1.2 The status of vocabulary in language teaching and learning Vocabulary teaching and learning has changed dramatically in the last two decades Mc Carthy (1990) pointed out that the biggest component of any language course is vocabulary The fact is that no matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of second language (L2) are mastered, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way Since the mid-1980s there has been a renewed interest in the role of vocabulary in second language learning There have been studies on the nature of the bilingual lexicon, vocabulary acquisition, lexical storage, lexical retrieval, and the use of vocabulary by second language learners Vocabulary is an essential component of language “Vocabulary is central to language” and “words are of critical importance to the typical language learner.” (Coady and Huckin, 1997) Nowadays, vocabulary is considered an important aspect of teaching and learning a foreign language L2 vocabulary acquisition has become an increasingly interesting topic of discussion for researchers, teachers, curriculum designers, theorists, and others involved in second language learning and teaching z 1.1.3 Main characteristics of vocabulary in business context What vocabulary is and how important it is in second language learning and teaching have just been discussed in the above sections In this section, what ESP vocabulary is and what major characteristics of vocabulary in business context are will be mentioned ESP vocabulary English for Specific Purposes (ESP) represents a specific reason for learning a foreign language There are two distinguished types of ESP: English for Occupational Purposes (EOP- learning English for a job) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP learning English for a study specialization) At present, these streams include many other fields, e.g English for Technicians, English for business, etc Technical words are specialized words closely related to a specific area or field of study like engineering, medicine, linguistics, etc They are commonly used in specialized course books The meaning of a word strict to the field in which it occurs identifies this group of words and its high frequency of occurrence or use in that field and covers about 5% of running words in the text (Nation, 2001) Specialized words are made up of words that occurred frequently in a specialized text or subject area but did not occur or were of frequency in other fields (Nation and Chung 2004) Main characteristics of vocabulary in business context It is necessary to specify that the characteristics of specialized English, including medical English, technical English, business English, etc lies in its lexicon Nguyen Phuoc Vinh (2011) researches the main characteristics of Business English Business English covers many subjects and professions, therefore; the meaning of a word is usually related to one/more than one subject such as accounting, finance, banking, marketing, etc These following parts will focus on the morphological and semantic characteristics of financial, accounting, and banking English vocabulary (Vinh, 2011) Morphologically he mentions: Simple words: financial, accounting, and banking English has simple words such as „asset‟, „bear‟, „capital‟, „debit‟, „earnings‟, „fraud‟,etc., and most words are composite in that they have a recognizable internal structure z ... CHAPTER THE INVESTIGATION 2.1 The context of the teaching and learning ESP vocabulary in ? ?English for Finance? ?? at the AOF 2.1.1 A description of the course book and the syllabus ? ?English for Finance? ??... vocabulary faced by the second- year non -English major students at the AOF when working with the course book ? ?English for Finance? ?? by Cao Xuan Thieu and his colleagues at the English faculty of the AOF... learning, and some factors affecting vocabulary memorizing The second chapter, Investigation, is the main part of the study It reports the collection and analysis of the data and major findings of