Tìm hiểu những khó khăn trong việc đọc hiểu tiếng Anh chuyên ngành của sinh viên năm thứ nhất hai khoa kế toán của trường Cao đẳng Nghề Cơ Điện Hà Nội

List of figures, charts and tables Figures: Figure 1: ESP classification by experience Figure 2: ESP classification by professional area Tables: Table 1: Students’ perception on the pu

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

ĐINH THỊ TUYẾT THOA

difficulties in reading “English for Finance” of the second-year-students of Accounting Department at Hanoi Vocational Training

College for Electro-Mechanics

TÌM HIỂU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC ĐỌC HIỂU TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGÀNH CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI KHOA KẾ TOÁN CỦA TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG NGHỀ

CƠ ĐIỆN HÀ NỘI

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410

Hanoi – 2011

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

ĐINH THỊ TUYẾT THOA

difficulties in reading “English for Finance” of the second-year-students of Accounting Department at Hanoi Vocational Training

College for Electro-Mechanics

TÌM HIỂU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC ĐỌC HIỂU TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGÀNH CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI KHOA KẾ TOÁN CỦA TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG NGHỀ

CƠ ĐIỆN HÀ NỘI

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410

Supervisor: Dr Dương Thị Nụ

Hanoi – 2011

List of abbreviation

ESP: English for Specific Purposes

EOP: English for Occupational Purposes

EAP: English for Academic Purposes

EEP: English for Educational Purposes

GE: General English

IT: Information Technology

HVTCEM: Hanoi Vocational Training College for Electro-Mechanics

List of figures, charts and tables

Figures:

Figure 1: ESP classification by experience

Figure 2: ESP classification by professional area

Tables:

Table 1: Students’ perception on the purposes of learning reading English for Finance

Table 2: Students’ focus when learning English for Finance

Table 3: The difficulties in term of reading skills

Table 4: The difficulties in term of vocabulary

Table 5: The difficulties in term of grammar

Table 6: The difficulties in term of cultural background knowledge

Table 7: Students’ views of sources of difficulties

Table 8: The students’ expectation in term of materials

Table 9: The students’ expectation in term of methodology

Charts:

Chart 1: Students’ preference in ESP reading

Chart 2: Students’ perception on the importance of ESP reading

Chart 3: Students’ perception on the necessity of reading English for Finance for their future job

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Statement of authorship

Acknowledgement

Abstract

List of abbreviations

List of figures, tables and charts

Table of content

i ii iii iv v vi Part I INTRODUCTION………

1 Rationale

2 Aims of the study

3 Research questions

4 Methods of research

5 Scope of the study

6 Organizations of the study

1 1 1 2 2 2 2 Part 2: Development ………

Chapter 1: Literature review

4 4 1.1 Basic concepts about ESP……… ………

1.1.1 Definitions of ESP

1.1.2 Types of ESP

1.2 Reading in ESP teaching and learning

1.2.1 Reading skills in ESP

1.2.2 ESP teachers and their roles

1.2.3 ESP students and their roles

1.2.4 ESP reading materials and their roles

1.3 Difficulties in ESP reading

1.3.1 Reading skill problem

1.3.2 Language problem

1.3.3 Cultural background knowledge problem

4

4

5

6

6

6

7

7

8

8

9

9

1.4 Summary 10

Chapter 2: The current situation of teaching and learning English for Finance at Hanoi Vocational Training College for Electro-Mechanics

2.1 Institution

2.2 The teachers and their methods of teaching

2.3 The students and their background knowledge

2.4 The teaching and learning English at HNVTCEM

2.5 General review of the course book “English for Finance”

2.5.1 Rationale for choosing the course book and objectives of the course

2.5.2 Topics, terminologies and grammatical structures

2.5.3 Characteristics of reading texts

2.6 Summary

11 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 16 17 Chapter 3: Research Methodology

3.1 Participants

3.2 The data collection methods

3.3 The data collection procedure

3.4 Data analysis

3.5 Summary

18 18 18 19 20 20 Chapter 4: Findings and discussion

4.1 Discussion of the results collected by means of the questionnaire

4.1.1 Students’ attitude towards ESP reading

4.1.2 Students’ perception on the purposes of reading lessons

4.1.3 Students’ focus when learning English for Finance

4.1.4 Students’ difficulties in learning reading English for Finance

4.1.4.1 In term of reading skills

4.1.4 2 In term of vocabulary

4.1.4 3 In term of grammar

21

21

21

22

23

23

24

24

25

4.1.4 4 In term of cultural background knowledge

4.1.5 The causes for these difficulties in learning reading English for Finance 4.1.5.1 From the reading materials

4.1.5.2 From the teachers

4.1.5.3 From the learners

4.1.6 The learners’ expectation in term of materials

4.1.7 The learners’ expectation in term of methodology

4.2 Discussion of the result collected by means of the interview, classroom observation and journal keeping

4.2.1 Teachers’ attitude towards ESP reading

4.2.2 Teachers’ opinion on the course book they are teaching

4.2.3 Teachers’ focus when teaching reading English for Finance

4.2.4 Teachers’ techniques to teach students in reading English for Finance

4.2.5 Teachers’ difficulties in teaching reading English for Finance

4.2.5.1 In term of cultural background knowledge

4.2.5.2 In term of methodology

4.3 Summary

27 27 27 27 28 30 31 32 32 33 33 33 34 34 35 36 Chapter five: Recommendations

5.1 Training students to become efficient readers

5.1.1 Improving students with different reading strategies

5.1.2 Encouraging students to develop extensive reading habits

5.2 Improving teachers’ techniques in teaching English for Finance

5.3 Developing English for Finance reading materials

5.4 Improving teachers’ professional knowledge about economics

5.5 Improving teachers’ teaching methodology

5.6 Summary

37

37

37

38

39

40

40

41

41

Part 3: CONCLUSION………

1 Summary of the findings

2 Limitation of the study and suggestion for further study

Appendix 1: Phiếu điều tra nghiên cứu

Appendix 2: Interview questions for teachers

Appendix 3: List of topics in the course book

Appendix 4: Unit 17: Financial statements

Appendix 5: Translated version of the survey questionnaire for students

44

I

V

VI VII

IX

Part 1: Introduction

1 Rationale

Learning English now is not only an interest but also a practical thing for many people Learning English means learning four related skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam, reading has always received a great deal of attention This is understandable because English is taught and learnt in non-English environment, so reading is not only the important means to get knowledge but also means of further study What is more, by means of English, the learners can take it professionally in their future work as well as in reading their specialized materials It is exactly true for students of accounting

At Hanoi Vocational Training College for Electro-Mechanics (HVTCEM), after finishing

120 general English periods, students of accounting department begin to take 60 ESP periods Being an ESP teacher of economics, the researcher has always been aware of the importance of developing reading skill for accounting students If students read well, they are able to handle subject-related written materials in English and to work with modern technology equipment But

in fact, in spite of the effort of the teachers and students, the researcher finds her students‟ reading disappointing, which do not meet the requirements of the college It is often seen that when poor reading results are reported, one tends to blame the students for having poor ability or for making insufficient effort However, the students are not always at fault With some years of English teaching experience, the researcher recognized that there are many other factors that affect the teaching and learning reading process such as inappropriate teaching methods and classroom techniques, inappropriate attitude of the teachers and learners towards the subjects, unsuitable teaching materials, etc

For all the above reasons, the researcher would like to find out the areas of students‟ difficulties at HVTCEM when learning reading English for Finance and the cause of these difficulties It is also hoped that the study will make some suggestions for the teachers and learners to improve the teaching and learning English for Finance at college

2 Aims of the study

This study aims to investigate the difficulties in reading English for Finance of the second year students at HVTCEM To be more specific, the objectives of this study are:

- To investigate the present situation of teaching and learning reading English for Finance

so as to find out the teachers and learners‟ areas of difficulties when teaching and learning English for Finance

- To suggest the ways to reduce these difficulties and help learners to improve their ESP reading skills

It is hoped that the findings from this study will be some benefits to teachers and students

at HVTCEM

3 Research questions

In order to achieve the aims mentioned above, two research questions were raised:

- What are the teachers and learners‟ areas of difficulties when teaching and learning reading English for Finance?

- To what extent do the teachers‟ teaching methods help learners overcome the difficulties and improve their ESP reading skills?

4 Methods of research

With the aims of finding out the areas of the difficulties in reading English for Finance at HVTCEM, this study adopts a survey research To achieve this aim, the survey questionnaire is used as the main instrument to collect the needed data from the learners Besides, other instruments are also made used of such as the researcher‟s observation, journal keeping as well as interview questions with the other 6 teachers of the College

5 Scope of the study

The study mainly focuses on some difficulties in ESP reading experienced by the second year students of Accounting at HVTCEM, and then suggests some techniques to help them overcome these difficulties and to improve their ESP reading skill

6 Organization of the study

This study consists of three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion The first part includes the rationale for choosing the topic of the study, the aims, the research questions, the methods, and the scope of the study

The second part comprises five chapters Chapter one deals with the theoretical background relevant to the research topic including Basic concepts about ESP, reading in ESP teaching and learning, difficulties in ESP reading Chapter two discusses the current situation of teaching and learning English for Finance at HVTCEM Chapter three presents the research methodology,

which focuses on the participants, the data collection methods, the data collection procedure and the data analysis Chapter four presents findings and discussion Chapter five provides some recommendations to reduce difficulties in reading English for Finance

The last part summarizes the mains issues of the study, points out the limitations and presents some suggestions for further research

Part 2: Development

Chapter 1: Literature review 1.1 Basic concept about ESP

1.1.1 Definitions of ESP

There are different definitions of ESP by different linguists According to Hutchinson and

Waters (1987), “ESP-an approach not a product- does not involve a particular kind of language,

teaching materials or methodology” In their opinion, ESP is not a matter of teaching specialized

varieties, but “is an approach to language in which all decisions as to content and method are

based on the learners’ reason for learning” So an ESP course should differ from a general

English course in selection of skills, themes, topics, situation and function And, all ESP courses should be based on the learners‟ needs and meet the learners‟ needs

However, Strevens‟ definition of ESP (1988) makes a distinction between 4 absolute characteristics and two variable characteristics:

- The absolute characteristics of ESP are:

+ designed to meet specified needs of the learners

+ related in context (that is in its themes and topics) to particular disciplines, occupations and activities

+ centered on language appropriate to those activities in syntax, lexis, discourse, semantics, and so on, and analysis of the discourse

- The variable characteristics are that ESP:

+ may be restricted to skill to be cleaned (for example reading only)

+ may not be taught according to any pre-ordained methodology

The definition by Robinson is based on two key defining criteria and a number of

characteristics that are found to be true of ESP The key criteria are that ESP is “normally

goal-directed” and that ESP courses develop from a need analysis, which “aims to specify as closed as possible what exactly it is that students have to do through the medium of English” (Robinson,

1991:3)

From the definitions above, it is clear that ESP courses are purposeful and aimed at the successful performance of occupational roles by an individual or a group whose need is considered to be a distinguished feature to those of General English

1.1.2 Types of ESP

ESP has been classified into different types, but the major distinction is often drawn between the two main areas namely EOP (English for Occupational Purposes) and EAP (English for Academic Purposes)/ EEP (English for Educational Purposes) The former involves work-related needs and training while the latter involves academic study Following is Robinson‟s tree diagram, which indicates a distinction between these two areas

ESP

Figure 1: ESP classification by experience (Robinson, 1991: 3)

Another diagram is used by Dudley-Evans and Jo St John (1998) to subdivide ESP In this diagram, ESP is also divided into two main areas: EAP and EOP, but they are further divided in terms of discipline or professional area

Figure 2: ESP classification by professional area (Evans and St John, 1998:6)

EOP

EEP/EAP

Pre-experience Simultaneous/ In-service Post-experience

For a study in a specific discipline

As a school subject

Pre-study In-study Post-study Independent Integrated

English for Specific Purposes

English for Academic Purposes English for Occupational Purposes

English for Management Finance and Economics

English for Professional Purposes

English for Vocational Purposes

English for Medical Purposes

English for Business Purposes

Pre-vocational English

Vocational English

1.2 Reading in ESP teaching and learning

1.2.1 Reading skills in ESP

In case of reading skills in ESP, Dudley-Evans and Jo St John (1998:96) listed the keys skills to be learnt and transferred into a new language as follows:

selecting what is relevant to the current purpose; using all the features of the text such as headings, layouts, type face; skimming for content and meaning; scanning for specifics; identifying for organizational patterns; understanding relations within a sentence and between sentences; using cohesive and discourse markers; predicting, interfering and guessing; identifying main ideas, supporting ideas and examples; processing and evaluating the information during reading; transferring or using the information while or after reading

Although ESP reading is usually related to particular content areas such as technology or engineering, the recent trends in ESP seem to share the assumption that readers‟ strategies can be generalized across subject boundaries This means general reading strategies should be taught to ESP students because, as Hutchinson & Waters (1987) pointed out, ESP is not different in kind from any other form of language teaching and ESP teaching should be based on the principles of effective and efficient learning

1.2.2 ESP teachers and their roles

Almost ESP teachers are teachers of General English (GE) who have unexpectedly found

themselves required to teach English for a specific purpose They are just “new settlers in a new

land” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1986) with no agreed maps to guide them For the non-native

teachers of English, they may have undoubtedly competence in English, but they may not cope with students‟ areas of specialism Therefore, unlike a GE teacher, an ESP teacher is required to have both competence in English and the knowledge of the students‟ specialist area In addition

to the normal functions of a classroom teacher, “the ESP teacher will have to deal with needs

analysis, syllabus design, materials writing or adaptation and evaluation” (Hutchinson and

Waters, 1987:157) Also according to these authors, ESP teachers should have three factors: (1) a positive attitude towards the ESP content; (2) knowledge of the fundamental principles of the subject matter; (3) an awareness of how much they probably know

Concerning to the roles of ESP teachers, Littlewood (1981:51) stated the ESP teacher is

expected to “perform in a variety of roles, separately or simultaneously” In fact, the role of the

teacher will vary according to the type of syllabus and course, the teaching and learning environment (Jordan, 1997) Thus, one of the most important qualities that an ESP teacher expects to have is flexibility which helps him to change from being a general language teacher to being a specific purpose teacher, and to cope with different group of students at a very short notice

According to Dudley-Evans and Jo St John (1998), the ESP teacher acts as a teacher, a course designer and material provider, a collaborator, a researcher and an evaluator

From those points of view, an ESP teacher must fulfill these widely acknowledged roles

And as the teaching becomes more specific and challenging, it is necessary that “ESP teacher

must know something about the subject matters of ESP materials” (Hutchinson and Waters,

1987:161)

1.2.3 ESP students and their roles

Students come to an English reading class with different command of English and for different purposes, but in any reading classes, the students act as readers They are involved actively in getting the right meaning from the text Sometimes, they meet difficulties in interpreting the text because of unfamiliar vocabularies and limited background knowledge or because their speech and comprehension ability are not yet up to the expectation In this case, the students have to work in the direction of their teachers Besides, ESP students also have to become familiar with English used in their specialized field Having acquired basic English in terms of grammar and having been familiar with reading activities, these students attend ESP reading classes with the hope to improve their reading skills in their specialized field Furthermore, in reading, the students would solve texts which are full of terminologies that can

be comprehensively understood only in combination with their available specialized knowledge

In short, for vocational purposes, ESP students are in a more requirement of not only English knowledge but also specialized knowledge of the field

1.2.4 ESP reading materials and their roles

Materials are very important in teaching and learning process, especially in teaching ESP They are considered as a source of language and a learning support They are also used for motivation and stimulation and for reference ESP is designed to meet specific needs of the learners so selecting reading materials is very necessary Selecting materials involves making

choices and decision To make good choices, we need to have good criteria on which to base the decision These criteria such as factors about the learners, the role of materials, the topics, the language, the presentation have been put forward for the analysis of materials and each of them has validity A good ESP material must contain interesting texts and enjoyable activities which make students think, opportunities for them to use their existing knowledge, skill and content that they and their teacher can cope with; truly reflect what they think and feel about learning process; provide clear and coherent unit structure to guide the students through various activities to maximize the chances of learning; introduce teachers to a new techniques and provide models of correct and appropriate language use (Hutchinson and Waters 1987; 107)

1.3 Difficulties in ESP reading

Reading in a foreign language is important to personal development, professional success and academic studies However, in learning reading especially in ESP reading, there are many factors affecting reading success such as reader‟s reading habits, attitude, motivation, exposure to the target language, textual characteristics, the way reading is taught and the teacher‟s classroom techniques or learning environment, etc The previous studies by Jolly (1978), Coady (1979), Yorio (1971) and others indicate that problems with foreign language reading may lie either on learners‟ reading skills, language proficiency or cultural and background knowledge

1.3.1 Reading skill problems

According to Jolly (1978), one‟s first language reading ability plays a more important role

in reading success than his level of the target language does because foreign language reading requires the transference of old skills, not the learning of new ones This view is shared by Coady (1979) who confirms that foreign language reading is a reading skill problem, not a language problem

Bernhard (1985:17) stated “Reading performance in a second language is largely shared

with reading ability in a first language” Sharing the same view, Sarig, G (1987) assumed that

“the same reading strategies types accounted for success and failure in both languages to almost

the same extent It can be concluded, then, that reading processes from the first language appear

to transfer to the foreign language”

It can be seen clearly that students‟ limited reading skills create many problems such as reading slowly, failing to understand and summarize main ideas of the reading text, and to enable

to guess or predict meaning of the words or phrases used in that context, etc Therefore, such students find it hard to be successful in their reading Finally, learners‟ motivation towards reading

is also an important factor in reading process It may affect reading result such as good speed, enjoyment, and comprehension Lacking motivation, the readers do not want to keep on reading

1.3.2 Language problems

Problems of foreign language learners in reading process, according to Yorio (1971:108), are mainly caused by the imperfect knowledge of the target language and the interference of the native language In his view, reading involves four factors: knowledge of the language, ability to predict or guess in order to make the correct choice, ability to remember the previous cues, and ability to make the necessary associations between the different cues that have been selected Therefore, learners with limited knowledge of the target language might have considerable difficulty in reading in the target language This view is supported by other researchers (Alderson, 1984, and Clarke (1980) who acknowledged that a lack of appropriate linguistic knowledge prevents the transfer of reading skills and strategies from the first language to the second language

When readers deal with a reading text, the first problem they often face is that they may

have to work with unfamiliar and difficult topics These are called “text problems” The content

of the text is rather strange to students, which makes them unable to understand Besides, another

kind of problem is “vocabulary problems” As we know grammatical knowledge accounts for a

great deal of competence in reading However, knowledge of grammar is a great deal more important as a factor of reading comprehension than awareness of grammatical structures (O‟Donnel, 1961:313-316) Readers encounter a lot of difficulties in dealing with probers and idioms, synonyms, antonyms, metaphor, etc which can be considered to have an impact on the readers‟ motivation These are the difficulties that foreign learners often face with when reading ESP students also have other difficulties in dealing with terminologies, concepts, tables, charts, graphs in their specific field All the above mentioned difficulties interfere with their process of learning reading ESP and set challenges for ESP and, therefore, make the teachers try to find out the ways to help their students with these

1.3.3 Cultural background knowledge problems

Apart from language problems and reading skills problems, cultural background knowledge can also affect students‟ reading ability Studies by Steffensen et all (1979); Carrell (1981) illustrated the effect of cultural knowledge on the product of comprehension, appealing to the processes of distortion and elaboration to account for the differences between a recall of a text and the original text Readers facing with unfamiliar cultural content may mistranslate or misinterpret the text according to their own cultural experiences It can also be seen that the cultural origin of a text has greater effect on comprehension than syntactic or semantic complexity of the text

For text structures, the impact of culture is less outwardly evident but apparently still present They will greatly affect readers‟ comprehension Sometimes, the implicit cultural knowledge presupposed by a text or from different assumption about meaning and comprehension held by the writer also causes difficulties to the readers For students of Accounting, although accounting rules or knowledge of economics are international applied, the presentation of accounting and economic texts may vary according to different countries that make students confused and misinterpret the reading texts

From what we have discussed, it can be concluded that there are three main factors that affect reading comprehension: reading ability or reading skills; language proficiency or language knowledge; and cultural and background knowledge Reading difficulties may be related to number of other factors such as readers‟ reading habits, attitude, motivation, and exposure to the target language, textual characteristics or the learning environment Whatever kind the problems are, they are various in the reading process in a foreign language and great efforts must be made

to overcome them

1.4 Summary

In this chapter, the relevant literature which has helped to form the theoretical and conceptual framework for the present study is presented First, it provides basic concept about ESP in which definitions, types of ESP are taken into consideration Next, information of reading skills in ESP and factors in teaching and learning are discussed Those factors include ESP teachers, ESP students, and ESP materials and their roles Finally, it presents an insight into ESP reading difficulties, which include reading skill problems, language problems, and cultural background problems

Chapter two: The current situation of teaching and learning

English for Finance at Hanoi Vocational Training College for

Electro-Mechanics

2.1 Institution

HVTCEM was founded in 1972 Initially, it was only a Vocational School Gradually, it was upgraded and became a Vocational Training College for Electro-Mechanics in 2006 Now, its mission is to train students to become workers in the major fields of Mechanical Engineering, Mechanical Dynamic Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Automobile and Welding Trade, and accountants and IT technicians in two new fields: Accounting and Information Technology

The students are provided with a lot of general educated subjects and different specializations like other institutions, of which English has been regarded as a vital component in the program But in fact, the conditions for teaching and learning English are not ideal due to the large class-size (more than 60 students in total), non-language environment, out-of-date reference documents, lack of facilities for language learning and teaching such as videos, tape recorders, projectors, and so on

2.2 The teachers and their methods of teaching

There are 12 teachers of English at the HVTCEM, aged from 26 to 41 All of the teachers are female and have university diploma from different universities in Vietnam At present, one of them is a M.A., the other 6 are doing a M.A course They are all teachers of GE who were not trained to teach ESP and they do not have knowledge of economics, either In fact, the teachers who were appointed to teach English for Finance hesitated to accept their task because it did take time for them to become familiar with the ESP course material However, when being in charge

of an ESP class, they are energetic and willing to devote their time and energy to teaching The problem is that they are inexperienced in teaching ESP and they also have no specialist knowledge on the subject matter So, they have to face many difficulties, of which the lack of the professional knowledge and the choice of appropriate teaching methodologies seem to be the major concerns What is more, most of them have little chance to access to the latest alterations

of language teaching methods Therefore, the majority of them still adopted the traditional

method of teaching in ESP reading lessons, which emphasizes translation activities, learner conformity in task completion, and success in an examination format Students are passive and only ask the teachers when they encounter difficult structures or words that they cannot find in the dictionary And the success is based on how flexible and adaptable the individual teacher is to respond to the requirement of the new teaching situation

2.3 The students and their background knowledge

The students of Accounting Department at the HVTCEM are full-time students, aging from 18-25 so they belonged to the same psychological age group They come from different parts of the country Most of them are from the rural or remote areas, where there are no good opportunities for studying English so they are varied in terms of English proficiency The others, who come from cities, theoretically, have all finished three years or seven years of learning English at high schools before entering the college, but in fact, their levels are rather mixed

To some extent, there are some students whose English is very good, but generally the target students‟ English proficiency is still of low level Moreover, the students come to the class with different English background and different attitude, motivation, learning style towards learning the language Some have learnt the Basic English at school, some have learnt Russian or French and the others have never learnt a foreign language Thus, the first thing the teachers have

to do is to improve the students‟ level of GE before they can deal with subject matters in this language In addition, although they had learnt the subjects of economics in Vietnamese, their specialized knowledge is rather poor so they find it difficult to read texts of economics in English Another issue is that most of the students do not have the habit of learning independently and tend to depend on the textbooks and the teachers for knowledge Finally, the large class size also makes the teachers and students difficult to fulfill their task of teaching and learning

2.4 The teaching and learning English at Hanoi Vocational Training College for Mechanics

Electro-Due to the particular tasks of our Vocational Training College, English at HVTCEM is allowed to be non-major subject Like many other subjects, English is taught in a formal classroom without language environment and the students have to do two English courses: 120-period GE and 60-period ESP, one after another

As far as the teaching materials are concerned, some textbooks for GE such as

“Streamline (Departure)”, “New Headway (Elementary)” and “New Cutting Edge (Elementary)” have been used recently In the stage for GE, the main objectives are to provide students with basic communicative skills Thus, the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) are focused on At the end of this term, students have to sit for a written exam which includes mainly grammar and vocabulary exercises

In the stage for ESP, the course books at HVTCEM include “English for Automobile and Welding Trade”, “English for Electrical and Electronics Engineering”, “English for Finance” and “English for Computer Science”, which were compiled by the teachers of Basic Science Department of College The ESP textbooks were designed with the purposes of providing the students with an amount of vocabulary relating to the investigation topics and training reading skills which would be helpful for their future job They focus on language skills: reading, writing, and translation The ESP textbooks put greater emphasis on content teaching – the knowledge of the specific areas than that on the language skills However, for most of the students learning these ESP textbooks, reading is the most challenging task

In term of methodology, ESP teachers usually employ the traditional method of teaching They often play the key role in the lesson, being the main speaker whereas the students are passive, only asking the teachers when the come across with difficult structures and vocabulary

2.5 General review of the course book “English for Finance”

2.5.1 Rationale for choosing the course book and objectives of the course

As can be seen, materials can be classified into textbooks and in-house materials The textbooks have been officially published and are available in the markets Teachers can choose them to teach students because these textbooks are written by the experts who have a lot of experience and expertise in the field and they will obviously be useful for the students Nevertheless, they are often criticized for not satisfying students‟ specific needs On the contrary, in-house materials which are compiled by the ESP teachers in the college or University used locally can make for the drawbacks of the published books Robinson, (1991: 58) believed that in-house materials are likely to be more specific and appropriate than published materials and therefore have greater benefits Moreover they are more flexible than published materials because the writers of in-house materials understand well the situation of teaching ESP to their students

For all above reasons, the book “English for Finance” has been chosen to be the official course book for students of Accounting The book was written by Cao Xuan Thieu (Dean) and the teachers of Languages Department at Financial Academy, and first published in 2006 It was compiled mainly based on course book sources, books and references of some countries like Britain, America, Canada, Australia and so on in the fields of Economics, Finance, Banks, Taxes, Accounting, Marketing, etc

The book was written with the aim of providing specialized knowledge of economics for different kinds of learners: those who have never learnt Economics, those who prepare for their future job, and those who have ever learnt Economics and now want to improve their professional knowledge to adapt their study and future job requirement

As a result, by the end of the English for Finance course, students will be able to:

- Develop reading skills and strategies

- Enlarge their economic vocabulary and terms in English

- Master English terms for economics used in different kinds of documents

- Consolidate and enhance basic grammatical structures used in specific texts

- Translate economic materials from English into Vietnamese and vice versa better

With such objectives of an ESP course for economics, students can build up a sense of confidence when contacting different economic materials in English to get the most general ideas

self-of the materials and serve their future study and career Students are also expected to obtain useful skills for different types of reading texts so as to understand authentic and adapted texts of economics, professional English materials

2.5.2 Topics, terminologies and grammatical structures

The book consists of 25 units covering 25 topics with reading focus only Each unit

discusses one basic issue closely related to economics such as The economic organization of society, Supply and Demand together, Pricing policies, Inflation, etc; related to accounting such

as Accounting, Financial statements, Assets, Liabilities, Depreciation, Audits, etc or related to

finance like Public finance and business finance, Corporate finance (Please refer to Appendix 3)

Each unit was arranged into five parts The first is Reading text The second and most important one is Comprehension questions The third part is Language focus The fourth one is Word study which includes some kinds of exercises like gap filling, multiple choice, true/false,

and matching definition The last one is Vocabulary Each unit has different length depending on the complexity of the subject matter In every unit, concrete objectives are set up at the

beginning For example, the objectives of Unit 17 “Financial statements” on page 94 (Please

refer to Appendix 4) state that at the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

- Distinguish the three financial statements

- Improve reading skills: scanning for details and skimming for main ideas

- Be more confident, active and co- operative

Concerning Terms in the reading texts, they can be classified into two main groups

according to their structural patterns: single and compound terms

Single terms are made up of one word, usually a noun or a verb such as inflation (lạm phát), finance (tài chính), accounting (hạch toán kế toán), liabilities (tài sản nợ), depreciation (khấu hao), ect, whearas the compound terms consists of two or more words These words, which are of different parts of speech, combine together and create terms that have the form of nominal groups such as public finance (tài chính công), business finance (tài chính doanh nghiệp), direct taxes (thuế trực thu), indirect taxes (thuế gián thu), capital market (thị trường vốn), financial statements (các bản báo cáo tài chính), fixed assets (tài sản cố định), etc

In addition, the terms exist in various forms They may be written in full such as the-counter transactions” or using acronyms (initial letters of words that form a group of words) such as OTC transactions (over-the-counter transactions), ECR (Exchange Control Regulations), GAAP (Generally accepted accounting principles), VAT (Value added Tax), etc One term may

“over-be repeated several times in each text For example, “The end product of the financial accounting

process is a set of reports that are called Financial statements GAAP require that such three reports be prepared: (1) a balance sheet, (2) an income statement, (3) a statement of cash flow”

(Unit 17, page 94)

Examining the grammatical structures of the texts, it is necessary to cover three

sub-units such as words, sentences and tenses Normally, an English word may consist of three parts:

a prefix, a stem and a suffix Most of the words in the course book exist in the form of stem

(finance, balance, interest, revenue ), some use prefix (inflow, outflow, inputs, outputs, imperfect ) or suffix (shortage, allowance, cashiering, profitable, negotiable ) Furthermore,

taking a closer look at sentences in the reading texts, it can be seen that simple and complex

sentences are used regularly In some texts, complex sentences are used more often than the

simple ones The use of these sentences with which/that clause is important in content

development as it helps in giving definitions or explanations or referring back to what is

mentioned For example, “There are roughly three ways to do it First it is setting interest rate

ceilings and floors, which means limiting, upwards or downwards, the fluctuations of the interest rate The third one which is a bit more modern is those open-market operations, which are simply buying and selling government bonds to and from commercial banks” (Unit 11, page 63)

In addition, the sentences are presented in both active and passive voice The passive sentences in

some texts outnumber the active ones such as “Planned economy: A system whereby the structure

of the market is deliberately planned by the state, in which production and consumption quotas are fixed beforehand ” (Unit 2, page 12)

In term of tenses, verbs in this book are limited to present simple, present perfect, or simple

future as the contents of most units share the same feature as to introduce to the readers and

students the true knowledge related to economics in present or future For example, “Inflation is

an economic condition in which prices for consumer goods increase and the value of money or purchasing power decreases” (Unit 6, page 37)

2.5.3 Characteristics of reading texts

The organization of information in reading texts of this course book, on one hand, shares

common characteristics of other reading texts, on the other hand, has its own characteristics The information is grouped into themes, in each of which there is the explanation of the main idea, terms, definition, examples for illustration, and the summary of the main ideas The information

is organized in either deductive or inductive way However, it should be noted that economics consists of some other fields such as accounting, finance so examples used to explain are rather important Normally, thanks to examples, readers can understand the explanation of the main ideas thoroughly and can guess the meaning of the whole text

The summary of a sample unit, which characterizes the reading text of accounting: Unit

17 on page 94: Financial statements (Please refer to appendix 4)

The content of this unit covers financial statements (or a set of reports) so the first paragraph is about the presentation of three kinds of financial reports and the second paragraph is the explanation of these reports in details It can be said that the organization of information in

the reading text is very clear; explanation of the main idea is careful including examples to illustrate Nevertheless, the explanation of the main idea sometimes makes readers confused and difficult to understand because of the vocabulary, terms or sentence structures or even difficult specialized knowledge

In short, after having a look at a general review of the course book “English for Finance” and introduction of some typical features of the reading texts, the researcher hopes to improve the teaching and learning English for finance in the way that it will help ESP teachers to be aware of the complicated nature of economic reading texts so that suitable strategies to teach reading will

be applied to minimize the reading problems and to improve students‟ reading skills

2.6 Summary

This chapter has provided an overview of the current situation of teaching and learning English for Finance at Hanoi Vocational Training College for Electro-Mechanics, given some information about the institution, the teachers and their methods of teaching, the students and their background knowledge The researcher has also presented general review of the course book “English for Finance” and objectives of the course Some problems that the teachers and students at the College face in the teaching and learning of ESP reading were pointed out

Chapter three: Research methodology 3.1 Participants

The participants of this study were 100 second-year-students of Accounting Department

of HVTCEM, aged 18 – 23, both male and female (mainly female) All of these students had finished a 120-period GE course and those who had just finished the ESP course with the total of

60 periods They were selected at random from 155 students of 2 classes KT 3C and KT3D to participate in the research It was difficult to select a random sample of individuals since students had already been assigned to different classes In this case, the researcher used cluster random sampling because this approach is more appropriate and convenient for the researcher to observe the participants to fill in/ or complete the questionnaire in classes Besides, 6 other teachers who have at least two-year experience in teaching English for Finance at the College were invited to participate in the study for informal interview

3.2 Data collection methods

To reach the primary aim of the study, a survey questionnaire has been chosen as the main instrument for data collection One survey questionnaire with 12 questions was designed for accounting students to identify their opinions on reading lessons and to find out their expectation

to achieve better reading competence The questionnaire is constructed based on the literature, the difficulties in reading English for Finance, the researcher‟s observation of the students during some years of teaching at HVTCEM, journal keeping as well as 10 interview questions with the other 6 teachers of the College

The questionnaire for students was written in Vietnamese so that they would not misunderstand the questions The questionnaire consists of two main sections Section one aimed

to collect information about the students‟ background which included their places of birth, the number of years they have learnt English or other languages and the material they are studying Section two aimed at seeking information about the students‟ attitude towards reading English for Finance, their difficulties in reading skills and the causes; and their expectations of the teachers‟ methodology and materials

Survey questionnaire is intended to serve as the main source of data because it is undeniable that question is valuable tool for investigating the attitude, images, concerns, needs, etc held by a group of interest Hence, it will certainly be valuable for the author in exploring the

subjects‟ difficulties in reading English for Finance Moreover, this research tool is also relatively more comfortable, time-saving and economical as compared with other survey methods like interviewing, telephoning, mailing, video taping Besides, additional data was obtained by other instruments such as classroom observation, journal keeping and informal interview with other ESP teachers

Classroom observation was employed to know the purpose of reading class, teaching methods, post-reading activities, and unforeseen difficulties in reading class

Journal keeping was used with the intention of recording the method of preparing ESP reading lessons and teaching techniques used in classroom, expected and unexpected problems the teachers are coping with while teaching, the solutions to unexpected problems and any brainwave to overcome to these problems

3.3 Data collection procedure

To collect the data for the study, journal keeping was the first instrument The researcher has been teaching ESP for 3 years and has kept the journal on her own since then with the purpose of recording difficulties during her teaching process in order to find out the solutions to overcome these problems Besides, twelve questions for students and ten interview questions for teachers were designed to collect more information supporting what the researcher has been recorded in her journal from ESP teachers and 2rd year students, respectively They were carried out after revising carefully and receiving comments from colleagues as well as supervisor Classroom observation was carried out during my colleagues‟ lectures in 10 lessons

To make it easy in analyzing data, 100 photocopied copies of the questionnaire were delivered to the students during the class time Before giving the questionnaires to the respondents, the researcher explained the purpose of the questionnaire, the requirements for the respondents and answered any questions asked by them Then, they were instructed to take as much time as they need to complete the questionnaire

To make sure the collected questionnaires were all correctly completed, the researcher asked for permission to have another contact with the respondents after data collection so that she could clarify any unclear responses

3.4 Data analysis

Data from the questionnaire were classified into different categories such as students‟ attitudes towards reading English for Finance, their difficulties in reading in the areas of vocabulary, grammar, reading skills, and cultural background, the causes of their reading problems and their expectations of the teachers‟ methodology Because the number of respondents is small, the data is manually analyzed using descriptive statistics (percentage) and interpretations The information was then displayed in forms of charts and tables Besides, the discussion of the result collected by means of the interview with ESP teachers, classroom

observation and journal keeping was presented

3.5 Summary

This chapter presented the participants, the data collection methods, collection procedure, and analysis Given the aims and objectives of the study, the researcher decided to use the survey questionnaire, classroom observation, journal keeping and informal interview with other ESP teachers By employing these instruments, the researcher hopes to achieve a triangulation of the data, which helps to make data more reliable

Chapter four: Findings and discussion 4.1 Discussion of the results collected by means of the questionnaire

4.1.1 Students’ attitude towards ESP reading

The questionnaire for students consists of 13 questions The information gathered by means of these questions can be analyzed one by one as follows:

Chart 1: Students’ preference in ESP reading

(Please refer to question 1 in appendix 1)

Very much Much Not much Not at all

Chart 2: Students’ perception on the importance of ESP reading

(Please refer to question 2 in appendix 1)

Very important Important Not very important

Chart 3: Students’ perception on the necessity of reading English for Finance for their

future job (Please refer to question 3 in appendix 1)

Very necessary Necessary Not very necessary

The reasons for these positive attitudes reading towards reading skill in general and reading English for Finance in particular derive from their understanding of reading for accounting students in their future work in which they have to read a lot of specialized documents Thus, the teachers hope to help the students enrich their background knowledge, increase their vocabulary and grammatical structures, improve their reading skill and gain confidence when dealing with economic materials in English

4.1.2 Students’ perception on the purposes of learning reading English for Finance

To the question about the purpose of learning reading English for Finance, the result is presented in the following table:

Table 1: Students’ perception on the purposes of learning reading English for Finance

(Please refer to question 4 in appendix 1)

c For enlarging vocabulary and economic terminology 36

The table shows clearly that the students‟ primary purpose of learning reading English is

to enrich their knowledge of economics 48% of the participants gave their priority to the knowledge of economics This means that the students always expect their teacher to be good at professional knowledge rather than a teacher who is only good at knowledge of language They really want their teacher to explain the related knowledge to the economics through the ideas in the reading part in details 36% of the students considered enlarging vocabulary and economic

terminology their most important purpose Reading improvement was the choice of 10 students 3% of the students chose learning reading English for Finance as for entertaining The rest 3% of them chose the item e (others‟) Two out of these 3 students stated that their purposes were to work with foreigners after graduating One of them said learning reading with no purposes at all The results are likely to lead to the idea that the students are willing to learn English Economics because they hope to learn much more knowledge of this field

4.1.3 Students’ focus when learning English for Finance

To this question, more than one choice is acceptable The result in this table is presented

in percentage that the options were chosen

Table 2: Students’ focus when learning English for Finance

(Please refer to question 5 in appendix 1)

As can be seen from the table, when being asked about their focus in learning English for Finance, the majority of the students chose to focus on vocabulary and economic terminology (75%) whereas 25% of them paid attention to the meanings of the texts The number of students laying the emphasis on grammar makes up for 20% of the total number Relating knowledge of economics was chosen to be the focus of 14% of the participants A little number of students gave their own opinion that they often concentrated on the types of the texts (3%)

4.1.4 Students’ difficulties in learning reading English for Finance

Reading difficulties in English for Finance perceived by our second year students are categorized in terms of reading skills, vocabulary, grammar, and cultural background knowledge Four questions were designed to find out students‟ perception of learning reading English for Finance The students were asked to rate on a 4- point scale (4 being “very difficult”, 3 being

“difficult”, 2 being “easy”, and 1 being “very easy”) The responses were then calculated in terms the percentages

4.1.4.1 In terms of reading skills

In the question 6, the participants were asked to point out the difficulties in term of reading skill The results of the responses are presented in the table below

Table 3: The difficulties in terms of reading skills

(Please refer to question 6 in appendix 1)

Scale rating

Question 6

Level of difficulty (%)

c Guessing the new words and predicting the content in the text 13 60 22 5

d Recognizing implication and making inferences, conclusion 75 22 3 0

The results shown from table 3 indicated that the responses in this section spread from

“very difficult” to “very easy” for all items, except for item 5d with none choosing the VE responses Item 6a showed that 74% of the participants found it “difficult” and “very difficult”, and 1% found it “very easy” Followed this item was item 6b and 6c, 6f and 6g, which showed that a small percentage of the students found it very difficult with these items but a rather high percentage of the students had difficulties with them (60% for 6b, 60% for 6c, 51% for 6g), except for item 6f, only 20% of the students found it difficult to answer the comprehension questions, and it was very easy to 15% of students Obviously, a considerable number of students had no difficulties in answering the comprehension questions because they could find the information which was readily available in the text

Item 6d illustrated the highest percentage of students having so many difficulties in recognizing implication and making inferences and conclusion (97%), and only 3% of them found it easy The items 6e also had a high percentage of students who found it very difficult and difficult to summarize the main ideas of the text (71%) This is because the fact that in this task, they had to use their own words to take notes their understanding quickly as much as possible or summarize the text while their number of vocabulary are not good enough

4.1.4.2 In terms of vocabulary

In question 7, the students were asked to point out the difficulties in some aspects of vocabulary The results are presented in Table 4

Table 4: The difficulties in terms of vocabulary

(Please refer to question 7 in appendix 1)

Scale rating

Question 7

Level of difficulty (%)

a Pronouncing and remembering lengthy words 27 59 14 0

b Understanding and remembering professional technical

words

c Understanding and remembering idiomatic expressions, verb

phrases and noun phrases

Item 7b showed that 13% of the students found it “very difficult” which accounted for the lowest percentage of all and 35% of them considered it “difficult” The largest number of students thought that it was easy to understand and remember professional technical words in economics The reason for this may be that many of professional technical words had been known

by the students through other subjects in their mother tongue so they eager to remember them

In the item7a and 7d, the majority of the students (59% and 60%) found it difficult for them to pronounce and remember lengthy words, and to find the appropriate meaning for poly-semantic words This means that it is difficult for most of the students to translate the reading text into Vietnamese As a result, the teachers have to spend much time explaining the vocabulary and terminologies to students in order to help them understand the text thoroughly

4.1.4.3 In terms of grammar

Question 8 pointes out the difficulties related to some grammar aspects The results are shown in table 5 below