An investigation into the IT students’ application of vocabulary guessing strategies in ESP reading comprehension at a university in bac ninh province

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES - - TRUONG THI HONG NHUNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE IT STUDENTS’ APPLICATION OF VOCABULARY-GUESSING STRATEGIES IN ESP READING COMPREHENSION AT A UNIVERSITY IN BAC NINH PROVINCE (Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng chiến thuật đoán từ kỹ đọc hiểu tiếng Anh chuyên ngành sinh viên Công nghệ thông tin trường Đại học Bắc Ninh) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Hanoi - 2018 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES - - TRUONG THI HONG NHUNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE IT STUDENTS’ APPLICATION OF VOCABULARY-GUESSING STRATEGIES IN ESP READING COMPREHENSION AT A UNIVERSITY IN BAC NINH PROVINCE (Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng chiến thuật đoán từ kỹ đọc hiểu tiếng Anh chuyên ngành sinh viên Công nghệ thông tin trường Đại học Bắc Ninh) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Phạm Thị Thanh Thùy Hanoi - 2018 DECLARATION I, the undersigned, certify my authority of the M.A minor thesis entitled “An investigation into the IT students' application of vocabulary-guessing strategies in ESP reading comprehension at a university in Bac Ninh Province” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts To the best of my knowledge and belief, this minor thesis contains no material which has previously been submitted to any university or institution Except where the references are indicated, no other person’s piece of work has been used without due acknowledgements in the text of the thesis Ha Noi, 2018 Student Trương Thị Hồng Nhung i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge my deep gratitude to all those who have supported me in doing this independent study First and foremost, I would like to express my greatest appreciation to my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Pham Thi Thanh Thuy for her valuable time and useful guidance towards the completion of this minor thesis Secondly, I am extremely grateful to my lecturers, my friends, my classmates, as well as my colleagues for their invaluable comments and criticism and also for their continued interest and encouragements, without their sincere participation, this paper would not have been possible Next, I truly wish to thank all my students at PPUTL, especially those of class B1D5 and B2D5 who have actively participated in the study Last but not least, my sincere thanks are extended to my beloved people, my parents, my husband and my daughter for their love, care, tolerance and encouragement during the time I had to spend for this thesis ii ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine the application of vocabularyguessing strategies among third-year IT students at PPUTL while doing ESP reading comprehension tasks and to propose solutions to help students overcome the difficulties they experienced when applying these strategies Three research questions are submitted and answered accordingly A pre-test, a post-test, a survey questionnaire and think-aloud protocol are employed as research tools in this study The collected results indicate that the participants of this study make use of various strategies to deal with unknown words while reading ESP texts Among those strategies, vocabularyguessing one is the most preferred method Of all word-inferring strategies, guessing meaning from context is the most frequently-used one by the students Using collocation and syntactic knowledge are the next two most preferred guessing strategies by the students And most students admitted that they particularly lack knowledge of vocabulary-guessing strategies, linguistic knowledge and intrinsic motivation for reading Some solutions then have been given by the author in order to help them overcome these difficulties Discussion, research limitations, pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research are also presented in this thesis iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES viii LIST OF CHARTS ix PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the Study Aims of the Study Research Questions Scope of the Study Significance of the Study Method of the Study Design of the Study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 An Overview of Reading Comprehension 1.1.1 The Nature of Reading Comprehension 1.1.2 The Relationship between Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension 1.2 Reading Comprehension Strategies 1.2.1 Definition of Reading Comprehension Strategies 1.2.2 Classification of Reading Comprehension Strategies 1.3 Vocabulary-guessing Strategies 11 1.3.1 Definition of Vocabulary-guessing Strategies 11 1.3.2 Classification of Vocabulary-guessing Strategies 12 1.3.3 Importance of Vocabulary-guessing Strategies 15 1.4 An Overview of ESP 16 1.4.1 Definition of ESP 16 1.4.2 Classifications of ESP 16 1.4.3 Characteristics of ESP 17 1.5 Summary of Chapter 19 iv CHAPTER TWO: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 20 2.1 Research Setting 20 2.1.1 An Overview of PPUTL and ESP Course in this University 20 2.1.2 The Students at PPUTL 20 2.1.3 The Teachers and Teaching Methods of ESP at PPUTL 21 2.1.4 Course Books for Teaching ESP at PPUTL 22 2.2 Research Methods 23 2.2.1 Description of the Subjects 23 2.2.2 Data Collection Instruments 24 2.2.3 Data Collection Procedures 27 2.2.4 Data Analysis Procedures 29 2.3 Summary of Chapter 29 CHAPTER THREE: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 31 3.1 Analysis of Questionnaires 31 3.1.1 The Students’ Attitudes towards the Role of ESP Reading Comprehension 31 3.1.2 The Students’ Attitudes towards Application of Vocabulary-guessing Strategies in ESP Reading Comprehension 33 3.2 Analysis of Verbal Reports 37 3.2.1 Word-guessing Strategies Employed by Students Collected through Thinkaloud Protocol 37 3.2.2 Comparison of Word-guessing Strategies Used by the Students in the Questionnaire and Think-aloud Protocol 39 3.2.3 Difficulties the Students’ Encountered When Using Word-guessing Strategies to Make Guess 40 3.3 Solutions to Help Students Overcome Their Difficulties When Applying These Word-guessing Strategies 43 3.4 Discussion of Research Questions 45 3.4.1 Research Question One 45 3.4.2 Research Question Two 46 3.4.3 Research Question Three 47 3.5 Summary of Chapter 47 PART C: CONCLUSION 49 Conclusion 49 v Pedagogical Implications of the Study 49 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research 51 REFERENCES 53 APPENDICES I APPENDIX 1: PRE-TEST I APPENDIX 2: POST-TEST V APPENDIX 3: ANALYSIS OF DIFFICULT LEVELS OF PRE-TEST IX APPENDIX 4: ANALYSIS OF DIFFICULT LEVELS OF POST-TEST XIV APPENDIX 5: ANSWER KEYS OF PRE- AND POST-TEST XX APPENDIX 6: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR VOCABULARY-GUESSING STRATEGIES .XXI APPENDIX 7: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS XXIV APPENDIX 8: PHIẾU KHẢO SÁT Ý KIẾN HỌC VIÊN XXVIII APPENDIX 9: STUDENTS’ VERBAL REPORTS XXXI vi LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS ABBREVIATIONS MEANINGS CEFR Common European Framework of Reference for Languages EFL English as foreign language ESL English as a second language ESP English for specific purposes EST English for Science and Technology GE General English IT Information Technology L1 First Language L2 Second Language PPUTL People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES List of Tables Table 1.1: Summary of vocabulary- guessing strategies that might be used by the IT students at PPUTL when doing ESP reading comprehension tasks Table 2.1: Vocabulary-guessing strategies used by the IT students at PPUTL Table 3.1: Ranks of strategies use according to results from Questionnaire and Thinkaloud protocol List of Figures Figure 2.1: Research procedure viii storage (1) mobipocket (1) (Amend) target (1) pda (1) (Amend) version (1) pdb (1) (Amend) pdf (1) (Amend) podcasts (1) (Amend) prc (1) (Amend) readable (1) (Amend) rss (3) (Amend) subscribe (1) (Amend) subscribers (1) (Amend) subscriptions (1) (Amend ) websites (1) (Amend) wiki (1) (Amend) wikipedia (1) (Amend) wikis (1) (Amend) zine (1) (Amend) (Source: http://www.englishprofile.org/wordlists/text-inspector) No Can-do statement Can use the present simple passive affirmative with a range of pronoun and noun subjects Can use indefinite pronouns with a relative clause to Level Example B1 Such information is delivered via e-books, CD/DVD, email or over the Web B2 Email newsletters are informal publications that deliver information to a target audience XVIII form complex noun phrases, to give focus (Source: http://www.englishprofile.org/english-grammar-profile/egp-online) XIX APPENDIX 5: ANSWER KEYS OF PRE- AND POST-TEST I PRE-TEST C C A B B C B A A 10 C II POST-TEST C C A B B C B A A 10 C XX APPENDIX 6: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR VOCABULARY-GUESSING STRATEGIES QUESTIONNAIRE TO CHOOSE VOCABULARY-GUESSING STRATEGIES USED BY THIRD-YEAR STUDENTS AT PPUTL (The questionnaire to select vocabulary- guessing strategies is sent directly to 20 people at PPUTL (including 10 third-year students, and 10 English lecturers from the Department of foreign languages) to ask for their comments The author has preliminary discussed over the phone, and send them the questionnaire before interviewing them) Dear Sir/ Madam, With the aim to discover the vocabulary- guessing strategies used by the thirdyear students at PPUTL to work out the meaning of unknown words when reading ESP texts, would you please mark "x" in the appropriate box indicating the most familiar and important vocabulary- guessing strategies No Vocabulary- guessing strategies Looking for relationships between words to determine the meaning of unknown word Deconstructing word parts and examining the meaning of each part Analyzing the compound words into their constituents Guessing based on sentence level semantic clues Looking beyond the word, or even the sentence, level for clues to determine the meaning Looking for homonym/ phonetic similarity XXI Your Notes/ choice Reasons Making guess based on collocation knowledge Paraphrasing Devices, which consisted of definition, exemplification, and restatement Logical Clues, which included comparison and contrast, causal clues, parallel, or parataxis, and collocation 10 Background Clues, which were composed of scene, common knowledge, and experience 11 Morphological Clues 12 Monitoring Devices 13 Guess using extra textual (thematic or word) knowledge Guess using discourse context i.e outside the 14 sentence in which the word occurred (using forward or backward context) 15 16 Guess using syntactic knowledge Guess using visual forms (similarity or morphological understanding) 17 Guess using phonological similarity 18 Guess using local (sentence level) context 19 Guess using association or collocation knowledge (i.e a clue word) XXII 20 Guess using pictures 21 Guess using head titles Thank you so much for your help! XXIII APPENDIX 7: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS (English version) This survey questionnaire is designed for my MA thesis on “Applying Vocabulary-guessing Strategies to Improve Reading Comprehension Skills of ESP Texts for IT Students at a University in Bac Ninh Province” This is not a test; please answer all the questions honestly in order to help me complete this thesis successfully All information that is collected through this questionnaire is completely confidential to outsiders, and will be used for the study purpose only Thank you very much for your help! DIRECTION: Please put a tick (✓) next to the option that is the most appropriate for you PART 1: The IT students’ attitudes towards the role of ESP reading comprehension Question 1: In your opinion, how important reading comprehension skill is for your future job in general and English for Specific (ESP) course in particular? a Not important at all b Not important c Quite important d Important e Very important Question 2: How you feel about the ESP reading comprehension texts? a Very easy b Easy c So so d Difficult e Very difficult XXIV Question 3: In your opinion, in order to ESP reading comprehension test well, how important the following factors are? Scales Items Not Quite important important Important Very important a Having a wide range of vocabulary b Having a good grammatical knowledge c Having a good knowledge of the text’s content d Applying suitable strategies for reading tests PART 2: The IT students’ attitudes towards application vocabulary-guessing strategies in ESP reading comprehension Question 4: How often you these activities when coming across unfamiliar words in the ESP text? Strategies Frequency of use Usually Skip new vocabularies and continue reading Underline the new words in the text Look up the new words in the dictionary and note them down Ask friends if they know XXV Sometimes Rarely Never the word Ask teachers for assistance Look for clues to meaning in the word itself (parts of speech, affixes) Use tables, figures, and pictures in the text to guess meaning of the words Guess meaning of the words from the context, the surrounding sentences Question 5: How often you use these following vocabulary-guessing strategies in order to make sense of unknown words in reading ESP texts? Frequency of use Vocabulary-guessing strategies Often Guess using background knowledge (extra textual knowledge) Guess using context clues (punctuations, definitions, examples, surrounding words) Guess using collocation knowledge Guess using syntactic knowledge (sentence structures and word order) XXVI Sometimes Rarely Never Guess using visual forms (word derivations such as prefixes and suffixes) Thank you very much for participating in this survey questionnaire XXVII APPENDIX 8: PHIẾU KHẢO SÁT Ý KIẾN HỌC VIÊN (Phiên tiếng Việt) Bảng câu hỏi nghiên cứu nhằm phục vụ đề tài luận văn thạc sỹ “Áp dụng Chiến thuật Đoán từ để Cải thiện Kỹ Đọc hiểu Bài khóa tiếng Anh Chuyên ngành cho Sinh viên Khoa Công nghệ Thông tin Trường Đại học Bắc Ninh” Đây kiểm tra; mong bạn học viên trả lời tất câu hỏi cách trung thực để giúp tác giả hoàn thiện đề tài luận văn thạc sĩ Mọi thơng tin em đưa bảng câu hỏi nghiên cứu giữ bí mật hồn tồn, sử dụng cho mục đích phục vụ nghiên cứu Trân trọng cảm ơn! HƯỚNG DẪN: Xin vui lịng đánh dấu tích (✓) bên cạnh lựa chọn mà đồng chí thấy phù hợp với PHẦN 1: Thái độ học viên chun ngành Cơng nghệ Thơng tin vai trị đọc hiểu tiếng Anh chuyên ngành Câu hỏi 1: Theo đồng chí, kỹ đọc hiểu quan trọng công việc tương lai đồng chí nói chung mơn tiếng Anh chun ngành nói riêng? a Hồn tồn khơng quan trọng b Không quan trọng c Khá quan trọng d Quan trọng e Rất quan trọng Câu hỏi 2: Đồng chí có cảm nhận đọc hiểu tiếng Anh chuyên ngành? a Rất dễ b Dễ c Bình thường d Khó e Rất khó XXVIII Câu hỏi 3: Theo đồng chí, để làm tốt thi đọc hiểu tiếng Anh chuyên ngành, yếu tố sau quan trọng nào? Mức độ Yếu tố Không Khá quan quan trọng trọng Quan trọng Rất quan trọng a Có vốn từ tiếng Anh rộng b Có kiến thức ngữ pháp tốt c Có kiến thức tốt nội dung đọc d Có chiến thuật phù hợp để làm đọc hiểu PHẦN 2: Thái độ học viên chuyên ngành Công nghệ Thông tin việc áp dụng chiến thuật đoán từ đọc hiểu tiếng Anh chuyên ngành Câu hỏi 4: Đồng chí thường sử dụng chiến thuật gặp từ đọc hiểu khóa tiếng Anh chuyên ngành? Tần suất sử dụng Chiến thuật Thường Thỉnh xuyên thoảng Bỏ qua từ tiếp tục đọc Gạch chân từ khóa Tra từ từ điển ghi chép lại Hỏi bạn bè Hỏi giáo viên XXIX Hiếm Không Tìm manh mối từ (từ loại, phụ tố) Đốn nghĩa từ dựa vào bảng biểu, hình vẽ khóa Đoán nghĩa từ dựa vào ngữ cảnh, câu xung quanh từ Question 5: Đồng chí thường sử dụng chiến thuật đoán từ để đoán nghĩa từ đọc khóa tiếng Anh chuyên ngành? Tần suất sử dụng Chiến thuật đoán từ Thường Thỉnh xuyên thoảng Hiếm Khơng Đốn từ dựa vào kiến thức (kiến thức bên ngồi khóa) Đốn từ dựa vào ngữ cảnh (dấu câu; định nghĩa; ví dụ; câu, từ xung quanh) Đoán từ dựa vào kiến thức kết hợp từ Đoán từ dựa vào kiến thức cú pháp (Cấu trúc câu, trật từ từ) Đốn từ dựa vào hình thái từ (tiền tố, hậu tố) Xin chân thành cảm ơn đồng chí tham gia trả lời Bảng câu hỏi khảo sát này! XXX APPENDIX 9: STUDENTS’ VERBAL REPORTS Participant 1: When I encounter an unknown word during reading, I immediately look at the words in the text in order to guess the meaning of this word Participant 2: I often had difficulties in comprehending an ESP text because of unknown terms while reading This situation made the text difficult to understand However, now the contextual information in the text leads me to understand the text For example, I don’t know the word “distribution”, I look for cues from the discourse context by looking at the forward or backward sentences and I guess it could be “the process of giving things out to several people” because “such information is delivered via e-books, CD/DVD, email or over the Web Participant 3: To find out the meaning of the word “format”, I recognize a punctuation clue in the sentence that is the colon (:) introducing a list of e-book types Therefore, I guess the word “format” means “the arrangement of information in a computer file Participant 4: In the text, the pronoun “they” used in the sentences “They are easy and cheap to set up online” must refer to “email newsletters” in the previous sentence Participant 5: I think “promote” must have the meaning as “advertise something in order to sell it” because I think of the noun “promotion” which means advertisement Participant 6: We did not know what vocabulary-guessing strategies are Sometimes our English teacher asks us to guess the meaning of new words from context, but we cannot that, we not know how to guess meaning from context Participant 7: XXXI We not enjoy reading ESP texts We learn to read ESP because we not have any choice It is a compulsory task in ESP curriculum and we learn it to get good marks Participant 8: It is not interesting to learn ESP reading comprehension The primary reason for me to learn it is because it is assigned I also learn this subject to meet the course’s demand XXXII ... conduct a study on ? ?An investigation into the IT students' application of vocabulary- guessing strategies in ESP reading comprehension at a university in Bac Ninh Province? ?? with the hope to make a little... method, the researcher mainly used qualitative and quantitative method Quantitative data were gathered from questionnaires while the qualitative data was obtained from the transcriptions of think-aloud... The Nature of Reading Comprehension In teaching and learning a foreign language in general and teaching reading skill in particular, it is necessary to understand the nature of reading comprehension