Khảo sát những khó khăn trong việc học đọc tiếng Anh chuyên ngành của sinh viên năm thứ hai Trường Đại học Kỹ thuật Công nghiệp Thái Nguyên

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** HOÀNG THỊ THU INVESTIGATING THE DIFFICULTIES IN

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

HOÀNG THỊ THU

INVESTIGATING THE DIFFICULTIES IN READING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES EXPERIENCED BY THE SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN

UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY (KHẢO SÁT NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC ĐỌC TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGÀNH CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KỸ THUẬT CÔNG NGHIỆP

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

HOÀNG THỊ THU

INVESTIGATING THE DIFFICULTIES IN READING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES EXPERIENCED BY THE SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN

UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY (KHẢO SÁT NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC ĐỌC TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGÀNH CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KỸ THUẬT CÔNG NGHIỆP

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

2 Aims of the study

3 Methods of the study

4 Scope of the study

5 Organization of the study

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: Literature review

1 The nature of reading

1.1 Definition of reading and reading comprehension

1.2 Reading process

1.3 Reading comprehension skills

2 ESP reading

2.1 Definition of ESP

2.2 Reading skills in ESP

2.3 ESP reading materials

3 Reading difficulties for non-native learners

3.1 Reading skills problems

3.2 Language problems

3.3 Cultural and background knowledge and reading difficulties

4 Summary

Chapter 2: Investigation into the current situation of teaching and

learning ESP at TNUT

i

ii iii

iv vii viii

1 Introduction to Thai Nguyen University of Technology

2 Syllabus, materials and assessment

3 Teachers and methods of teaching

3 The data collection instrument

4 Procedure for data collection

5 Data analysis

Chapter 4: Findings and discussion

1 Students‟ attitude towards ESP reading

2 Students‟ opinion of ESP reading difficulties

2.1 In the area of vocabulary

2.2 In the area of grammar

2.3 In the area of discourse

2.4 In the area of reading skills

2.5 In the area of background knowledge

2.6 Rank order of ESP reading difficulties

3 The causes of difficulties

3.1 The reading materials

3.2 The teachers

3.3 The learners

4 Students‟ recommendations for improving reading

5 Summary

Chapter 5: Pedagogical implications

1 Making ESP reading interesting and useful

2 Developing ESP reading materials

2.1 Adjusting and improving reading exercises

2.2 Updating reading texts in the coursebook

3 Training students to become efficient readers

3.1 Making students aware of the nature of reading process

3.2 Making students fully aware of their purpose of reading

3.3 Teaching students a variety of reading strategies

3.4 Encouraging students to develop extensive reading habits

4 Improvement of teachers‟ teaching techniques in the classroom

4.1 Employing three phases in ESP reading lessons

4.2 Giving homework and checking the previous lessons frequently

4.3 Adjusting teaching time and imposing time limits

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

TNUT: Thai Nguyen University of Technology

ESP: English for Specific Purposes

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Students‟ attitude towards ESP reading

Table 2: The difficulties in the area of vocabulary

Table 3: The difficulties in the area of grammar

Table 4: The difficulties in the area of discourse

Table 5: The difficulties in the area of reading skills

Table 6: The difficulties in the area of background knowledge

Table 7: The average mean of the items in each area of difficulties

Table 8 Learners‟ view of sources of difficulties

Figure 1 Schematization of the Top-down Approach

Figure 2 The vicious circle of the weak reader

Figure 3 Mean number of difficulties in the area of vocabulary

Figure 4 Mean number of difficulties in the area of grammar

Figure 5 Mean number of difficulties in the area of discourse

Figure 6 Mean number of difficulties in the area of reading skills

Figure 7 Mean number of difficulties in the area of background knowledge

Figure 8 Average mean number of areas of difficulties

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Nowadays, English has become more and more important than ever when Vietnam integrated into the international arena The number of people who wants to learn English is increasing, they are trying to learn it with the hope that they can use it effectively

In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam, reading has always received a lot of attention for the reason that reading is not only an important means to get knowledge but also a means of further study

Students at TNUT learn two semesters of GE in the first year After that they learn ESP in the third semester in the second year During the GE course, they learn all four

skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking However, when they learn ESP,

reading skill is paid most attention to These students are future technical engineers so they have to learn ESP to make themselves familiar with technical materials Therefore, they will be able to handle subject-related written materials in English and work with modern technological equipment The ability to read English is an important skill to gain access to knowledge in technology However, in spite of the efforts of the teachers and students, the teachers often find their students‟ reading skill disappointing, which does not meet the requirements of the university There are many factors which affect the teaching and learning process such as: unsuitable teaching materials, inappropriate attitude of the teachers and students towards the subject, inappropriate teaching methods…etc

For all the above reasons, I would like to find out the areas of students‟ reading difficulties at TNUT and the causes of their unsuccessful reading comprehension Hopefully, when the results of the study are stated, the students can have some suggestions to improve their reading skill and use their reading skill more effectively

2 Aims of the study

This study is designed to find out the areas of difficulties in ESP reading experienced by the second-year students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology and the causes of their unsuccessful reading comprehension The aims of the study are as follows:

- To investigate the students‟ attitude towards ESP reading

- To find out the students‟ areas of difficulty and the sources of difficulty

- To examine the students‟ needs in terms of reading material and teaching methodology

- To suggest ways to reduce the difficulties and help them to improve their reading comprehension

3 Methods of the study

To achieve the aims of the study, both qualitative and quantitative methods are used

By means of qualitative method, the researcher has to refer to different materials, previous researches and relevant issues related to reading and ESP reading By means

of quantitative method, a survey questionnaire is used The survey questionnaire is done on 100 second-year students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology

4 Scope of the study

Because of the size of this minor thesis, the study is only focused on investigating some linguistic and reading skills problems and background knowledge difficulties in ESP reading faced by the second-year students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology

5 Organization of the study

The thesis includes three parts

The first part “Introduction” comprises a rationale for the study, the aims, the

method, the scope of the study and the organization of the thesis

The second part “Development” consists of five chapters:

Chapter 1 is concerned with the theoretical background related to the research topic such as the nature of reading, ESP reading and ESP reading difficulties for non-native learners

Chapter 2 examines the current situation of teaching and learning ESP reading at Thai Nguyen University of Technology

Chapter 3 presents the research methodology with the focus on the research questions, the participants, the instruments and data collection procedure

Chapter 4 analyzes the collected data and discusses the findings

Chapter 5 gives some suggestions to reduce difficulties and improve the teaching and learning of ESP reading

The last part of the study “Conclusion” summarizes the findings, points out the

limitations and suggests future research

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Literature review

1 The nature of reading

1.1 Definition of reading and reading comprehension

There are many definitions of reading by different authors Each of them gives it out

from his own point of view As defined by Goodman (1971:135), reading is “a

psycholinguistic process by which the reader, a language user, reconstructs, as best as

he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display”

Meanwhile, Harmer (1989:153) described reading as a mechanical process that

“eyes receive the message and the brain then has to work out the significance of the

message” Sharing the same opinion, Smith (1985:102) defined “reading is understanding the author’s thought”

In spite of the difference, all authors try to find out the nature of reading, reading act,

in which readers, reading process and reading message are emphasized

Reading comprehension plays an important part in teaching and learning a language

It is the ability to obtain the information from the text as efficiently as possible There are three elements involving in the reading process: the text being read, the background knowledge of the reader and the contextual aspects relevant for interpreting the text

According to Swan (1975:1), “a student is good at comprehension” if “he can read

accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information of a text with the minimum understanding” Whereas, Grellet (1981:3) pointed out “reading comprehension or understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible”

Although their ideas are not exactly the same, they all agree that reading comprehension is the process in which the readers, as they read, can recognize the

graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind these forms

1.2 Reading process

There exist three models of reading process: bottom-up, top-down and interactive

The first model is the bottom-up one: According to Cambourne (1979) it became the

basis of a large number of reading schemes In this model, the reader begins with the written text, and constructs meaning from letters, words, phrases and sentences found within, and then processes the text in a linear fashion In the process of meaning

interpretation, the language is translated from one form of symbolic representation to another (Nunan, 1991)

In this text-driven model, the reader plays a relative passive role as he/she builds comprehension by moving eyes from letters to letters, words to words, phrases to phrases, sentences to sentences to identify their exact meaning

In short, the bottom-up model tends to be linear as it starts with the printed stimuli and proceed to higher–level stages, one step after another The basis for bottom-up processing is linguistic knowledge of the readers There is now a great deal of evidence pointing to the shortcomings of the bottom-up reading model For example, Samuels

and Kamil (1988:31) point out that the lack of feedback, “in that no mechanism is

provided to allow for processing stages which occur later in the system to influence processing which occurs earlier in the system” makes it “difficult to account for sentence-context effects and the role of prior knowledge of text topic as facilitating variables in word recognition and comprehension.”

The second model is top-down model: The reading process moves from the top, the

higher level of mental stages, down to the text itself In these models the reading

process is driven by the reader‟s mind at work on the text (reader-driven model)

Cambourne (1979:41) provides the following schematization of the approach

Past experience,

language intuitions

and expectations

→ Selective aspects of print → Meaning →

Sound, pronunciation

if necessary

Figure 1 Schematization of the top-down approach

This model emphasizes the reconstruction of meaning rather than the decoding of form, the interaction between the reader and the text rather than the graphic forms of the printed page The reader proves his active role in the reading process by bringing to the interaction his/her available knowledge of the subject, expectations about how language works, motivation, interest and attitudes towards the content of the text

According to Dechant (1991:25) “the knowledge, experience, and concepts that

readers bring to the text, in other words, their schemata, are part of the process… Reading in this context is more a matter of bringing meaning to than gaining meaning from the printed page.” What is important in constructing meaning from the printed

material is the reader‟s prior knowledge and cognitive and linguistic abilities

Clearly, the strong points of top-down models outnumber those of the bottom-up as the reader – the centre of the reading process proves his active role However, to some researchers, these models still reveal certain shortcomings because they sometimes fail

to distinguish adequately between beginning readers and fluent readers Moreover, a purely top-down concept of the reading process makes little sense for a reader who can

be stymied by a text containing a large amount of unfamiliar vocabulary What is more,

in top-down models, the generation of hypotheses would actually be more consuming than decoding (Stanovich, 1980)

time-The third type - interactive models of the reading process - derives from the

perceived deficiencies of both bottom-up and top-down models Interactive theorists appreciate the role of prior knowledge and prediction and at the same time emphasize the importance of rapid and accurate processing of the actual words of the text

Rumelhart (1977:573) suggests that reading is a perceptual and a cognitive process

He believes that the reading process is neither bottom-up nor top-down and comprehension is the result of the interaction between the two Comprehension depends upon how well readers do both

Stanovich (1980) argues that in Rumelhart‟s interactive model the strength in one processing stage can compensate for the weakness in another The problems in both models can be alleviated and successful reading, then, is an interplay between bottom-

up and top-down processing

1.3 Reading comprehension skills

Reading is a complex process involving an interaction between the reader and the text Readers use mental activities in order to construct meaning from the text These activities are usually referred to as reading skills To be an efficient reader, one needs

to develop a number of reading skills And these skills should relate to both the

bottom-up and the top-down processing

Nuttall (1982: 65-124) provides a list of main reading skills as follows:

Text-attack skills: (1) Significance and cohesion: Understanding sentence

syntax; Recognising and interpreting cohesive devices; Interpreting discourse markers

(2) Discourse: Recognising functional values; Tracing and

interpreting rhetorical organization; Recognising the presuppositions underlying the text; Recognising implications and making inferences; Prediction; Integration and application

Munby (1978) has another list of micro reading skills: Recognising the script of a language; Deducing the meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical terms; Understanding explicitly stated information; Understanding information when not explicitly stated; Understanding conceptual meaning; Understanding the communicative value (function) of sentences and utterances; Understanding relations within the sentence; Understanding relations between the parts of a text through lexical cohesion devices; Understanding relations between the parts of a text through grammatical cohesion devices; Interpreting text by going outside it; Recognising indicators in discourse; Identifying the main point or important information in a piece of discourse; Distinguishing the main idea from supporting details; Extracting salient points to summarise (the text, an idea, etc.); Selective extraction of relevant points from a text; Basic reference skills; Skimming; Scanning to locate specifically required information; Transcoding information to diagrammatic display

Considering and comparing the above suggested lists of reading skills, it can be seen that they share some common features and can be grouped into the following main types: recognition skills, decoding skills and comprehension skills

When reading a text, the reader must use all these skills The reader is required to use his linguistic knowledge as well as background knowledge and both bottom-up and top-down processing

2 ESP reading

2.1 Definition of ESP

Over the past decades, an area of ESL that has been a subject of increasing interest among the theorists in the field is ESP Many of them have attempted to define ESP in order to result in a clearer concept

Hutchinson and Waters (1987:19) explained that “ESP is an approach to language

teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner’s reason for learning.” So an ESP course should differ from a GE course in the selection

of skills, themes, topics, situation and function All ESP courses should be based on the learners‟ needs and meet the learners‟ needs

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

- The absolute characteristics of ESP are: designed to meet specific 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, and in contrast with GE

- The variable characteristics of ESP are: may be restricted to skill to be learned (for example reading only) and may not be taught according to any pre-ordained methodology

It can therefore be concluded that the purpose of ESP reading is to develop the readers‟ reading skills in the contents relevant to their occupations or fields of studies

2.2 Reading skills in ESP

Dudley-Evans and St Johns (1998:96) show some of the key skills: selecting what is relevant to the current purpose; using all the features of the text such as headings, layout, typeface; skimming for content and meaning; scanning for specifics; identifying 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 the readers‟ strategies can be generalized across subject boundaries This means general reading strategies should be taught to ESP students because, as Hutchinson & Waters (1987) point 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

2.3 ESP reading materials

Materials play an important role in teaching and learning process, especially in teaching ESP reading 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 important The reading materials must be used for a given purpose-preferably some application or transfer of information, be designed to encourage the use (or teaching) of good skills and have follow-up language work that concentrates on what is transferable Selecting materials involves making choices and decisions To make good choices, we need to have good criteria on which to base the decision Numerous criteria such as factors about the learners, the role of the materials, the topics, the language, the presentation have been put forward for the analysis of materials and each of them has validity According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987:107), a good ESP material must contain interesting texts, enjoyable activities which make the students think, opportunities for them to use their existing knowledge, skills and content that they and their teachers can cope with; truly reflect what you think and feel about learning process; provide clear and coherent unit structure to guide the student through various activities to maximize the chances of learning; create a balance outlook which both reflects the complexity of the task, yet make it appear manageable; introduce teachers

to new techniques and provide models of correct and appropriate language use

3 Reading difficulties for non-native learners

Reading in a foreign language is important to personal development, professional success and academic studies However, this can cause considerable difficulties for the learners The studies by Jolly (1978), Coady (1979), Yorio (1971) and others indicate that problems with foreign language reading may exist either in learners‟ reading skills, language proficiency or cultural and background knowledge

3.1 Reading skills problems

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

in reading success than his level of the target language because foreign language reading requires the transference of old skills, not learning of new ones Thus students who fail to read adequately in the first language will fail because they do not possess

„old skills‟ or because they have failed to transfer them This view is the same as that of

Reads slowly

Doesn't understand Doesn't read much

Doesn't understand

Coady (1979) who asserts that foreign language reading is a reading skill problem, not

a language problem These two writers believe that if the reader has a poor reading ability in his mothertongue, then, he cannot read well in a foreign language

Students‟ limited reading skills create many problems Students reading in a foreign language seem to read considerably slower than they reportedly read in their first language Some students who read too slowly will easily get discouraged They do not know how to use the appropriate ways to move their eyes from word group to word group They just look at every single word, and consequently fail to grasp the general meaning of the passage Sometimes, readers may encounter a text which is too long Readers may know a lot of the vocabulary, and the topic of the text is familiar to them Yet they cannot concentrate well on the text and when they get to the last paragraphs, they cannot recall what they have read in the first ones

Reading is an active skill, involving guessing and predicting There are new words, new structures and ideas in a reading text for every language learner If he/she does not have a good guessing ability and can not make full use of grammatical, logical and cultural clues, he/she will read the text with less understanding than he/she might expect, and he/she will feel frustrated at the text, and will not want to keep on reading

As a result of this, the reader is trapped in a vicious circle:

Figure 2: The vicious circle of the weak reader

(Nuttall, 1982:167)

3.2 Language problems

Yorio (1971:108) argues that reading problems of foreign language learners are due

to the imperfect knowledge of the target language and due to mother tongue interference in the reading process According to him, 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 when reading in the target language

Dealing with a reading text, readers have to face various difficulties The first and foremost problem is that the readers may have to work with unfamiliar and difficult

topics These are called “text problems” The content of the text might be strange to the

students and the grammatical structures might be also new, too As a result, they cannot understand it The readers will find the text very challenging and might not have any motivation left to keep on reading

The second is the “vocabulary problems” As everyone knows, grammatical

knowledge accounts for a great deal of competence in reading However, knowledge of vocabulary is a great deal more important as a factor of reading comprehension than awareness of grammatical structures (O‟Donnell, 1961: 313-316) Readers encounter a lot of difficulties in dealing with proverbs and idioms, synonyms and antonyms, polysemantic and subtechnical vocabulary Metaphor, metonymy and other types of transference of meaning also cause great difficulty for readers

3.3 Cultural and background knowledge and reading difficulties

According to Fries (1963), meaning at the social level is the meaning that transcends the language code and is related to the background knowledge of the native speakers of that code Comprehension of the total meaning of a sentence occurs only when the

linguistic meaning of the sentence is fitted into “a social framework of organized

information”

Many studies (Steffensen et al., 1979), Carrell, (1981) have demonstrated 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 text and the original text Readers facing with unfamiliar content may mistranslate or misinterpret the text according to their own cultural experiences

From what we have discussed, it seems that there are three main factors that affect reading comprehension: reading ability or reading skills/strategies; language proficiency or linguistic knowledge; and cultural and background knowledge

4 Summary

In this chapter, the relevant literature which has helped form the theoretical and conceptual framework for the present study is presented

Firstly, it provides an overview on the nature of reading, in which the definitions of reading and reading comprehension are discussed Then, the currently dominant models of reading process are addressed in regard of strong points and drawbacks Classification of reading according to the purpose of reading is also mentioned

Secondly, it also discusses the definition of ESP, ESP reading materials Finally, it provides an insight into ESP reading difficulties, which include reading problems, language problems, cultural and background knowledge

Chapter 2: Investigation into the current situation of teaching and

learning ESP at TNUT

1 Introduction to Thai Nguyen University of Technology

Thai Nguyen University of Technology (TNUT) has been operated for 45 years Its duty is to train students to become engineers in three major fields: mechanical engineering, electrical and electronics engineering Every year our university admits about 2000-2500 learners for a course of study for 5 years After graduating, our learners become mechanical, electrical and electronics engineers In their jobs, they have to read technical materials a lot Therefore, the coursebook is used for all of them including texts of three above fields

2 Syllabus, materials and assessment

At TNUT, English is taught in two stages During the first stage (consisting of two terms), students study General English, focusing on the development of four language

skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking The textbook is New Headway

elementary It is taught within two terms, each term has 72 periods The second stage

lasts one term (36 periods) in which students learn special English related to their field:

English for electrical and mechanical engineering The coursebook is composed by

teachers of English division It consists of seven units focusing on the subject matters

of technical engineering, namely:

Unit 1: Engineering – what‟s it all about?, Unit 2: Machines, Unit 3: Engineering materials, Unit 4: Engines, Unit 5: Electricity, Unit 6: Robots, Unit 7: Computer-aided

in engineering and manufacturing

Regarding the assessment, the commonly-used form includes written achievement tests (a mid-term and an end-of-term one) and a daily test

3 Teachers and methods of teaching

Our university has got 15 English teachers, aged from 25 to 50 Thirteen of them had formal ELT training in different tertiary institutions inside Vietnam, and only two had an in-service ELT training course The oldest teacher has nearly 30 years of teaching experience and the youngest teacher has two years

Each of us has the duty to teach both GE and ESP Only three of us have been training in teaching ESP in Hanoi University of Technology Therefore we still have to

face many difficulties, of which the lack of the content knowledge and the choice of appropriate teaching methodologies seem to be the major concerns

As far as the methodology is concerned, ESP teachers usually employ the traditional method of teaching in ESP reading lessons Classes are conducted in the form of lectures Most of the time the teachers play a key role in the lesson, being the main speaker working with the text The teachers often explain new words, new structures, and even translate the text into Vietnamese Students are passive and only ask the teachers questions when they face difficult structures or words that they cannot find in the dictionary And the success rests on how flexible and adaptable the individual teacher is to respond to the requirement of the new teaching situation

4 Students

Students at TNUT come from different provinces of the country and have the following characteristics: Most of the students are male; they have a good sense of responsibility and self-adjustment and they are highly self-conscious and well-aware of their purpose in learning

Although they have learnt English at school, their English proficiency is low because they come from mountainous areas in the North and Centre of Vietnam They did not pay much attention to English They did not consider English as important as other subjects which helped them to enter university such as mathematics, physics and chemistry Therefore, the first thing teachers have to do is to improve the students‟ level of General English before they can deal with technical subjects matters in this

language

5 Summary

This chapter has provided an overview of Thai Nguyen University of Technology It also presented some information about the students and learning requirements, about the teachers and their method of teaching ESP The chapter has discussed how an English course at TNUT is organized, the textbooks, materials and time allowance for the course

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the research methodology that has been employed for the achievement of the aims and objectives of the study is presented Data were obtained

by using a survey questionnaire Beside the survey data, additional data were gathered

by other instruments such as informal discussion with teachers and informal interview with students to provide more information

1 Research questions

The study was carried out to provide insights into the areas of difficulties in ESP reading of second-year students of Thai Nguyen University of Technology and the causes of their unsuccessful reading comprehension Therefore, it was conducted to seek answers to the following questions:

1 What are the English reading difficulties that students at TNUT have when reading technical materials and what is the level of seriousness of each reading difficulty?

2 What are the causes of these difficulties?

3 What are the students‟ suggestions in terms of technical materials and teaching methodology to reduce these difficulties?

2 The participants

The participants of the study were 100 second-year students at TNUT Ten of them were female and the rest were male They came from different provinces in the North

and Centre of Viet Nam Their age was from 19 to 22 Although they had finished New

Headway Elementary, their proficiency of English was varied because their length of

learning English at school (before entering TNUT) was different Some of them started learning English at grade 6, others started at grade 10

The reason for choosing the second-year students for this study is as follows: students only take ESP course after finishing GE course (New Headway elementary) which was studied in the first year

Those students were selected at random 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, cluster random sampling was more feasible, which means that instead of randomly selecting the individuals, the researcher randomly selected the

groups or classes for investigation This approach is more appropriate and convenient for the researcher to observe the participants who filled the questionnaires in classes

3 The data collection instrument

The main instrument for data collection in this study was a survey questionnaire Survey questionnaire was chosen because it allowed the researcher to collect a large amount data in a relatively short time Therefore, it was certainly valuable for me to explore the students‟ difficulties in reading ESP

The questionnaire was constructed based on the literature on ESP learners‟ reading difficulties, my observation of my students during 4 years of teaching at TNUT and my discussion with the other teachers of English of the faculty Before given to the students, the questionnaire was piloted on a group of 20 second-year students of TNUT

to check if the questionnaire could provide the kind of information it was intended and

if its wordings would cause confusion and misunderstanding to the respondents After that, necessary changes were made to improve the questionnaire

The questionnaire is divided into two main parts: part one aimed to collect information about the students‟ background which included their place of domicile, the number of years they had been learning English and their proficiency levels in English measured by their average marks in English in the first year Part two aimed at collecting information about the students‟ attitudes to reading ESP; their difficulties in reading ESP and the causes and students‟ recommendations This part includes 10 questions Questions 1-3 elicited information about learners‟ attitudes towards ESP reading Questions 4-8 investigated the areas of difficulties that the learners faced when reading in ESP Question 9 explored the causes of the students‟ reading problems Question 10 got their opinions about some suggestions to reduce reading difficulties The questionnaire was also written in Vietnamese to ensure students‟ accurate understanding of all the questions before answering them (See Appendix C)

Beside the questionnaire, informal interviews and small talks with the teachers and students were conducted to obtain further information for the research

4 Procedure for data collection

The questionnaire was administered during the class time Before the questionnaire was given to the respondents, the researcher explained the purpose of the questionnaire, the requirement for the respondents and answered any question asked by the

respondents The respondents were also encouraged to ask if there was anything in the questionnaire they did not understand Then they were instructed to take as much time

as they needed 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

5 Data analysis

Data from the questionnaire were classified into different categories such as students‟ attitudes towards the ESP reading, their difficulties in reading ESP in the areas of vocabulary, grammar, discourse, reading strategies and cultural background knowledge, the causes of their reading problems, and their expectations of the teachers‟ methodology and materials Data are analyzed using descriptive statistics and interpretation Then the information is displayed in forms of tables and figures

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents the results from the analysis of the data collected from the questionnaire The presentation is divided into four parts The first part presents the students‟ attitude towards ESP reading The second part describes the findings on English reading difficulties faced by TNUT students when dealing with the material The third part gives detailed information about the causes of their difficulties And the last part discusses some recommendations of the students towards reading materials and teaching methodology

1 Students’ attitude towards ESP reading

Three questions in the questionnaire are to explore the students‟ attitudes towards

ESP reading They were asked to choose among “strongly agree” (SA), “agree” (A),

“disagree” (D), “strongly disagree” (SD) The results are presented in Table 1

1 Reading is an important skill in

ESP learning

2 ESP reading is very necessary for

our future job

Table 1: Students’ attitude towards ESP reading

Based on the table, 35% of students strongly agreed with question 1 and 61% agreed, which means that 96% considered reading an important skill in ESP learning

Only 4% did not find reading important No one chose “strongly disagree” response In

learning ESP, reading is practiced more than other skills It helps them to extend their knowledge about science and technology This is easy to understand Our students are future engineers In the job, engineers often deal with technical materials Most of them are printed in English, even the language of machines is also English Those who have

a good command of English will work smoothly

The students are aware of the importance of reading in ESP learning, so nearly all of them (99%) believed that ESP reading is very necessary for their future job Only 1% strongly disagreed

However, there is a sad fact that the number of students agreed with question 3 was not very high (7% strongly agreed and 44% agreed) There were many students who did not like reading ESP (49%)

Students had this attitude because of many reasons Although they have learned English for a long time, from 3 to 7 years, their English competence was very low Their average marks on GE during the first two terms were not very good (some even got marks below 5 and had to relearn many times) This surely had a bad influence on their ESP learning They couldn‟t improve their learning Therefore, they had no more interest

2 Students’ opinion of ESP reading difficulties

Reading difficulties in ESP faced by our second-year students are classified into vocabulary, grammar, discourse and reading skills and background knowledge The

level of difficulty is rated as follows: 4 = very difficult, 3 = difficult, 2 = easy, 1 = very

easy The responses are computed in terms of the mean, standard deviation and the

percentage Thanks to this method, we can obtain the highest means for items perceived as most difficult The means are understood in the following way: 1.0 – 1.5

means “very easy”, 1.6 – 2.5 means “easy”, 2.6 – 3.5 means “difficult”, 3.6 – 4.0 means

“very difficult”

2.1 In the area of vocabulary

In Question 4, the participants were asked to point out the difficulties in some aspects of vocabulary The results are shown in Table 2 and diagrammatically illustrated in Figure 3

Questions

Mean SD How difficult/easy (%)

4a Understanding new

vocabulary stemming from new

4d Finding the appropriate

meaning for polysemantic words 3.28 0.570 34 60 6 0

Table 2: The difficulties in the area of vocabulary

3.14 3.12 3.16 3.28

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5

Mean

Figure 3: Mean number of difficulties in the area of vocabulary

From the table, we can see that the mean is from 3.12 to 3.28, which is meant that vocabulary is difficult to the students Vocabulary stock of students is very limited

They could deal with the texts in New Headway elementary because they are short with

few new words However, when they learned English for electrical and mechanical engineering in the third semester, they met long texts with high density of new words

So sometimes they read without understanding the text

Among 4 items, item 4d (Finding the appropriate meaning for polysemantic words)

is the top difficulty of all with a fairly high mean (M = 3.28, SD = 0.57) 34% of

students thought it was “very difficult” for them to find the appropriate meaning for polysemantic words 60% considered it “difficult” and only 6% thought it was “easy”

No students believed it was “very easy” In fact, students sometimes misunderstood the

content of the text due to choosing the wrong meaning of the polysemantic words When they were asked to translate the text, they produced funny version

Although item 4b (Understanding and remembering professional technical words)

has the lowest mean (M=3.12, SD=0.64), it is higher than 3, which shows that no aspect of vocabulary is easy to the students

Item 4a (Understanding new vocabulary stemming from new technology) and 4c (Understanding and remembering idiomatic expression, verb phrases and noun

phrases.) have a little higher mean than item 4b, with M = 3.14 (SD=0.532) and M =

3.16 (SD=0.647) respectively

2.2 In the area of grammar

In Question 5, the participants were asked to give out the difficulties in some aspects

of grammar The results are shown in Table 3 and diagrammatically illustrated in

Figure 4

Questions

Mean SD How difficult/easy (%)

5a Recognising the word‟s part

of speech: nouns, verbs,

adjectives, …

2.77 0.633 10 58 31 1

5b Understanding and using

verb tenses, forms and verb

phrases

2.96 0.618 16 65 18 1

5c Understanding and using

5d Understanding and using

unfamiliar syntactic structures 3.25 0.626 35 55 10 0

5e Understanding and

identifying the types of

sentences: simple or complex,

passive or active voice

2.68 0.875 20 35 38 7

5f.Understanding the

relationship between clauses of

compound and complex

sentences

2.91 0.805 20 59 13 8

Table 3: The difficulties in the area of grammar

2.77 2.96 3.05 3.25 2.68 2.91

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5

Mean

Figure 4: Mean number of difficulties in the area of grammar

As can be seen from Table 3, the means of the grammar difficulties are from 2.68 to 3.25, which are lower than those in the vocabulary

Item 5d (Understanding and using unfamiliar syntactic structures) has the highest

mean (M=3.25, SD=0.626) This is a big problem for the students 35% of students found it very difficult to understand and use unfamiliar syntactic structures in the reading texts 55% thought it was difficult and only 10% considered it easy None of them thought it was very easy When students met the structures which they had not learned before, they perhaps could not understand the whole meaning by guessing

Item 5e (Understanding and identifying the types of sentences: simple or complex,

passive or active voice) has the lowest mean (M=2.68, SD = 0.875) 38% of students

thought it was easy to identify the types of sentences: simple or complex, passive or active voice and 7% considered it very easy This part seems to cause little difficulty to the students For students, it is easy to distinguish between simple and complex sentences, between passive and active sentences

Item 5a (Recognising the word’s part of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives) has a little

higher mean (M=2.77 and SD=0.633) It can be understood that students meet some difficulty in these areas

Item 5b (Understanding and using verb tenses and forms, verb phrases), item 5c (Understanding and using noun phrases) and item 5f (Understanding the relationship

between clauses of compound and complex sentences) have quite high means (M=2.96

and 3.05 and 2.91 respectively) Verb phrases, noun phrases and the relationship between clauses of compound and complex sentences are also a problem to the students More than half of the students found it difficult In fact, students claimed that they did not know how to identify verb phrases or noun phrases They often made

mistakes when dealing with exercises related to verb phrases or noun phrases, for example, changing the active sentences into passive ones or vice versa Whereas, in technical materials, most of subjects and objects are noun phrases

2.3 In the area of Discourse

Question 6 examined the difficulties in the area of discourse The results are presented in Table 4 and are diagrammatically shown in Figure 5

understanding ellipsis (if so/ if

not…) and substitution

(one/ones, the same…)

6e Identifying and recognising

conjunctions and discourse

ideas: main ideas, supporting

details, topic sentence…

Table 4: The difficulties in the area of discourse

2.86 2.78 2.73 2.99

2.41

2.77 3.04

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5

Mean

Figure 5: Mean number of difficulties in the area of discourse

Looking at Table 4, we can see that item 6e (Identifying and recognising

conjunctions and discourse markers) has the lowest mean with M=2.41 lower than 2.5,

which shows that most students (64%) had no difficulties in identifying and recognising conjunctions and discourse markers Only 8% considered it very difficult and 28% considered it difficult Students are too familiar with them such conjunctions

as AND, OR, BUT… which are used repeatedly in all texts

Item 6g (Identifying organisation of ideas: main ideas, supporting details, topic

sentence) has the highest mean (M=3.04, SD=0,618) 20% of students claimed it very

difficult, 75% claimed it difficult, 14% claimed it easy and only 1% thought it was very easy Because of this, students often do the exercises finding the titles for each paragraph or summarizing the text incorrectly

The other items 6a (Understanding relationship between sentences/segments in a

text), 6b (Understanding the relationship between paragraphs in a text), 6c

(Understanding graphs and diagrams.), 6d (Identifying and understanding ellipsis (if

so/ if not…) and substitution (one/ones, the same…)) and 6f (Recognising functional values (explaining, reporting, describing)) have fairly high means These areas of

discourse also cause difficulty to the students

2.4 In the area of Reading skills

Question 7 explored the difficulties in the area of reading skills and the results are shown in Table 5 and diagrammatically illustrated in Figure 6