An evaluation of the ESP materials for the 2nd year students of faculty of financial accounting, hà hoa tiên university in hà nam and suggestions for adaptation

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* LÊ THU TRANG AN EVALUATION OF THE ESP MATERIALS FOR THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF FACULTY OF FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING, HÀ HOA TIÊN UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTIONS FOR ADAPTATION Đánh giá giáo trình tiếng Anh chuyên ngành dành cho sinh viên năm thứ hai khoa Tài Kế toán trường Đại học Hà Hoa Tiên, Hà Nam đề xuất hiệu chỉnh giáo trình M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111 Hanoi, 2014 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* LÊ THU TRANG AN EVALUATION OF THE ESP MATERIALS FOR THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF FACULTY OF FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING, HÀ HOA TIÊN UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTIONS FOR ADAPTATION Đánh giá giáo trình tiếng Anh chuyên ngành dành cho sinh viên năm thứ hai khoa Tài Kế toán trường Đại học Hà Hoa Tiên, Hà Nam đề xuất hiệu chỉnh giáo trình M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111 SUPERVISOR: Dr TRẦN THỊ THU HIỀN Hanoi, 2014 i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify my authority of the submitted minor thesis entitled “An evaluation of the ESP materials for the nd year students of Faculty of Financial Accounting, Hà Hoa Tiên University in Hà Nam and suggestions for adaptation”, in terms of statement of requirement for the thesis and the field study reports in Masters‟ programs, is the result of my own work, except where otherwise acknowledged and that this minor thesis or any part of the same had not been submitted for a higher degree to any other universities or institutions Hanoi, August 2014 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENT On the completion of this thesis, I would like to give my sincere thanks to many people for their encouragement and assistance during the preparation of my thesis First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Trần Thị Thu Hiền, who has been most willing and ready to give me valuable and helpful guidance, advice and support during the most difficult time of thesis construction Without her help, this thesis would not have been made possible My special thanks also go to all the teachers in the English Department, at Hà Hoa Tiên University for their enthusiastic participation and constructive suggestions for the development of the study And I also wish to express my thanks for the great cooperation from the second year accounting students of the Faculty of Financial Accounting and the graduated ones in the data collection of my study My gratitude also extends to my lecturers for their interesting and helpful lessons during of working towards my master‟s degree Last but not least, my sincere thanks go to my family who give me much motivation, energy and support in accomplishing this challenging work iii ABSTRACT Coursebook evaluation is of great importance in assessing how effective a coursebook is to the teaching and learning of foreign languages The thesis is carried out in an attempt to evaluate the suitability of the coursebook “English for Finance” (Cao Xuân Thiều, 2008, Publisher of Finance) for the second year students of financial accounting at Hà Hoa Tiên University, in Hà Nam to the course‟s objectives in terms of aims, contents, and methodology The study makes use of survey research approach with data collection instruments of questionnaires in form of Likert rating scale type, informal interviews, and with the involvement of 69 informants Type of summative evaluation was chosen to seek for significant improvements for subsequent use The findings points out that the coursebook is partially suitable to the course‟s objectives and would be subsequently used for incoming ESP courses at the university However, seeking for effectively and completely obtaining given objectives of the course, there should be necessary improvements to be made with the coursebook in terms of language components, reading topics, types of exercises and tasks, guidance and suggestion for further study and practice as recommended in the study iv TABLE O STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ACKNOWLEDGMENT ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS LIST OF TABLES PART A: INTRODUCTION 1.Rationale 2.Aims of the study 3.Scope of the study 4.Research question 5.Research method 6.Significance of the study 7.Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 ESP cours 1.1.1What is m 1.1.2Why shou 1.1.3When sho 1.1.4How can t 1.1.5Who shou 1.2Materials, coursebook and textbook 1.3 Materials 1.3.1Definition 1.3.2Materials 1.4 Previous s 1.5 Chapter s CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2.1Context of the study v 2.1.1 2.1.2 2.1.3 2.1.4 2.2 Data colle 2.2.1 2.2.2 2.2.2.2 For the informal interviews 2.2.3 2.3 Chapter s 3.1 Subjective 3.2 Objective CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS 3.2.1 3.2.2 3.2.3 3.3 Findings a 3.3.1 3.3.2 3.3.3 3.4 Recomme 3.4.1 3.4.2 3.4.3 3.5 Chapter s PART C: CONCLUSION 1.Recapitulation 2.Concluding remarks Limitations of the study vi vii LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS EGP: English for general purposes ESP: English for specific purposes FOFA: Faculty of Financial Accounting HHT: Hà Hoa Tiên University VNU-ULIS: Vietnam National University – University of Languages and International Studies viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Statistics on the nd year students‟ opinions on the coursebook in terms of aims Table 2: Statistics on the 13 graduated students‟ opinions towards the statement (appendix 1) Table 3: Statistics on the graduated students‟ opinions toward statements and (appendix 1) Table 4: Statistics on the 13 graduated students‟ opinions towards the statement (appendix 1) Table 5: Statistics on the 53 second year students‟ opinions towards the statement (appendix 2) Table 6: Statistics on the 13 second year students‟ opinions towards the statements and (appendix 1) Table 7: Statistics on the nd year students‟ opinions toward statements and (appendix 2) Table 8: Statistics on the 53 second year students‟ opinions towards the statement (appendix 2) Table 9: Statistics on the nd and 11 (appendix 2) year students‟ opinions toward statements 10 V APPENDIX The teachers’ views on the ESP coursebook in terms of aims, contents, and methodology as stated in the interviews The teachers‟ opinions toward the coursebook in terms of aims The coursebook provides students opportunities to……… Communicate orally in English in the area of financial accounting Comprehensively read English documents relevant to financial accounting Comprehensively make English written documents relevant to financial accounting Improve knowledge in English grammar Enrich English vocabulary in financial accounting Present topics of financial accounting in Key:   English = mentioned by the teacher = not mentioned by the teacher The teachers‟ opinions toward the coursebook in terms of of contents Students are provided with topics closely related to their major The course units should be organized in a way suitable to the students‟ needs and quality Key:  = mentioned by the teacher = not mentioned by the teacher The teachers‟ opinions toward the coursebook in terms of methodology Students find it difficult to answer reading comprehension questions They are more motivated with multiple choices and true/false tasks Students have been not motivated with grammar and words study‟s individual works There should be specific guidance and VI suggestions for further study Key:  = mentioned by the teacher = not mentioned by the teacher VII APPENDIX Recommended samples for adapting the coursebook Sample 1: Unit ECONOMICS Part 4: Writing comprehension Write a brief description (no more than 300 words) about economics beginning with the following sentence, using structures of simple sentence: “Economics is defined as a study of how goods and services get produced, and how they are distributed.” Part 5: Translation – Compound nouns * Instructions: - A compound noun is a noun composed of two or more words that are used together to form a single noun - Some basic structures of noun compounding method Noun + Noun: sales manager: giám đốc bán hàng Adjective + noun: distressed-sale: nhu cầu bán gấp Preposition + noun: by- product: phụ phẩm Noun + preposition + noun: cost of capital: chi phí vay vốn door to door (service): dịch vụ tận nơi Noun + preposition: bail out: cứu trợ tài Noun + verb_er: share-holder: cổ đơng been-counter: kế toán - To translate these nouns, start at the end or consider the context to get their meanings correctly an executive search company: a company that searches for executive a government training course: a course of training provided by the government * Exercises for practice Task 1: In pairs, work out the meanings of these following compound nouns, you can use your dictionary if necessary Commodity-types products Buyer-choice behavior Product-line manager VIII Sales manager Production manager Finance manager Exchange rate Manufacturing productivity Manufacturing exports Task 2: Work with your partner and translate the following sentences from English to Vietnamese and vice versa 27 An economic system is supposed to be regulated by the law of supply and demand 28 Economics is about the everyday things of life, how we get our living, and why sometimes we get more and sometime less 29 I can also report that manufacturing grew last year by 1.6%, manufacturing productivity grew by 4.4% 30 Giám đốc tài có vai trò định việc đưa các chiến lược định giá sản phẩm 31 Kinh tế học nghiên cứu cách thức đưa các định các thành viên tham gia vào kinh tế Sample 2: What is cost accounting? Cost accounting involves the techniques for determining the costs of products, processes, projects, etc in order to report the correct amounts on the financial statements, and assisting management in making decisions and in the planning and control of an organization For example, cost accounting is used to compute the unit cost of a manufacturer's products in order to report the cost of inventory on its balance sheet and the cost of goods sold on its income statement This is achieved with techniques such as the allocation of manufacturing overhead costs and through the use of process costing, operations costing, and job-order costing systems Cost accounting assists management by providing analysis of cost behavior, cost-volume-profit relationships, operational and capital budgeting, standard costing, variance analyses for costs and revenues, transfer pricing, activity-based costing, and more Cost accounting had its roots in manufacturing businesses, but today it extends to service businesses For example, a bank will use cost accounting to determine the cost of IX processing a customer's check and/or a deposit This in turn may provide management with guidance in the pricing of these services (extracted from an online article retrieved from www.businessdictionary.com/definition/cost-accounting.html) Sample 3: What is accounting for sales discount? A sales discount is a reduction in the price of a product or service that is offered by the seller, in exchange for early payment by the buyer A sales discount may be offered when the seller is short of cash, or if it wants to reduce the recorded amount of its receivables outstanding for other reasons An example of a sales discount is for the buyer to take a 1% discount in exchange for paying within 10 days of the invoice date, rather than the normal 30 days (also noted on an invoice as "1% 10/ Net 30" terms) Another common sales discount is "2% 10/Net 30" terms, which allows a 2% discount for paying within 10 days of the invoice date, or paying in 30 days If a customer takes advantage of these terms and pays less than the full amount of an invoice, the seller records the discount as a debit to the sales discounts account and a credit to the accounts receivable account The sales discounts account appears in the income statement and is a contra revenue account, which means that it offsets gross sales, resulting in a smaller net sales figure The presentation of a sales discount in the income statement is: Gross sales $xxx,xxx Less: sales discounts (xxx,xxx) Net sales $xxx,xxx A company may choose to simply present its net sales in its income statement, rather than breaking out the gross sales and sales discounts separately This is most common when the sales discount amount is so small that separate presentation does not yield any material additional information for readers Most business not offer early payment discounts, so there is no need to create an allowance for sales discounts (extracted from an online article retrieved from http://www.accountingtools.com/questions-and-answers/what-is-the-accounting-for-salesdiscounts.html) X Sample 4: Read the text and choose the best answer The report confirms an auditors‟ first responsibility of ……… to his client A confidentiality B accountants C auditors D businesses B irregularities C errors D all There are cases where an auditor is …… obliged to disclose information to the authorities A legally D errors Auditors should go direct to the regulatory authorities in cases of …… A frauds C irregularity The report suggests …… must also consider the publics A managers B notice B illegally C responsibly D irresponsibly Which one is NOT true according to the paragraph 17-p.208? A Many people were interested in what auditors B People in the influential and financial aware group ignore what auditor C The accountant never worried about his or her image D The influential group included chairman, director, or partner in an enterprise Am auditor‟s role is very often confused with that of an/a ……… A sales director B bookkeeper C accountant D auditor Sample 5: - pre-reading: discussing a given topic relating to accounting job as the students‟ future job, listing what accounting jobs concern with, naming accounting works by looking at some relevant pictures, constructing semantic webs (a graphic arrangement of concepts or words showing how they are related) - While-reading: identifying topic sentences, and the main idea of paragraphs, distinguishing between general and specific ideas, identifying the connectors to see how they link ideas within the text, skimming/scanning the text for specific information - post-reading: reflecting what they are reading, mapping the process by first drawing and then describing it, or retelling based on such major concepts as definition of accounting, the purpose of accounting, types of accounting information XI Sample 6: Reading comprehension exercises Multiple choices: 1.1 What a company possesses is …… a the balance sheet c assets b liabilities d a statement 1.2 Which does the writer likely agree with? a Every country in the world shares a common method of arranging three major sections of the BS b The USA and England regulates similarly how to arrange three major sections of the BS c Assets, liabilities and equity are arranged on the left-hand side of the page d English accountants don‟t arrange assets on the left-hand side of the page 1.3 It can be inferred from the passage that… a When listing a company‟s assets, accountants must show the company‟s fixed and current assets b The assets of a company consist of tangible and intangible assets c The liabilities are included in the assets d An accountant doesn‟t need to list current assets in the balance sheet 1.4 Website domain and trademark of a company must be listed in … a the tangible assets c the current assets b the intangible asset d the fixed asset 1.5 Which of the following is TRUE? a The intellectual property right is current assets b Land, machines and equipments are excluded in fixed asset c An American accountant will list the long-term loans on the right hand side of the page d Cash at the bank is tangible assets 1.6 What does the number £2.2 million in line paragraph page 186 refer to? a The total of current assets b The total of current assets after being reduced by the total of current liabilities c The total liabilities d The total of current liabilities 1.7 The word “less” in line paragraph page 186 is closest in meaning to … a Subtract c multiply b Add d divide XII 1.8 The word “topped up” in line paragraph page 187 is closest in meaning to … a added by b reduced by 1.9 Which figure does the word “this sum” in line paragraph a £2.45 million b £450,000 1.10 Why does the shareholders‟ equity increase by further £1.15 million? a Because of the revaluation of its fixed asset b Because of the difference between the issued share value and the actual price of the shares c Because of a more realistic market price d Because of a share premium account Matching definition and terms: 2.1 The term refers to what a company owes 2.2 It consists of fixed assets and current assets 2.3 It can be mentioned with loans and any provisions 2.4 It consists of capital and reserves 2.5 The statement of what a company owns and what it owes 2.6 Patens, goodwill are two typical of this kind of assets 2.7 It refers to freehold property, land, equipments XIII APPENDIX The results of the matching stage The following table is for report the matching result on basis of comparing the subjective realization of course‟s objectives and the coursebook evaluation The coursebook evaluation Aims/Objectives Contents XIV XV APPENDIX Checklist for evaluating ESP materials by Hutchinson and Waters (1987, 99:104) (e.g analysis of the course in terms of materials requirements) 1A Who are your learners? • Age • Sex • Study of work specialist • Knowledge of English/ specialist • Educational backgrounds • Interests 2A What are the aims of the course? 3A covered? structures, vocabulary areas?) 4A deducing the meaning of unfamiliar words) 5A micro-skill? Is there integrated work? 6A need? 7A What text types should be included? 8A What subject matters are required? - What level of knowledge should be assumed college)? 9A How should the content be organized throughout The course? E.g around language points?/ by subjectmatter?/ by some Other means (e.g study skills)?/ by a combination of means? XVI 10A How should the content be organized within the Course units? - by a set pattern of components?/ - by a variety of of patterns?/ - by some other means?/ to allow a clear focus on e.g certain skill areas, a communication task, etc.? 11A sequenced throughout the course? E.g - from easier to more difficult? – to create variety? - to provide recycling? by other criteria? Should there be no obvious sequence? 12 A How should the content be sequenced within a unit? E.g - from guided to free?, - from comprehension to production?,- accuracy to fluency?, - by some other means? Should there be no obvious sequence? How should the content be Methodology 13A What kinds of tasks and exercises are needed? 14A What teaching – learning techniques are to be used? • Lockstep • Pair work • Group work • Students presentation • Other kinds 15A What aids are available for used? • Cassette recorders? • Overhead projectors? • Video? • Other? 16A What guidance/ support for teaching the course will be needed? • Statements of aims? • List of vocabulary and other language-skills points? • Language guidance? XVII • Other kinds? 17A What kinds of exercises/ tasks are needed? E.g - Guided – free? - Comprehension – production? - Language/skills practice – language/ skills use - One right answer – many possible answers - Whole class –group – individual? -Language – skill based/content based? - Self study? - Some other kinds 18 A What guidance/support for teaching the course statements of aims?/ - lists of vocabulary and language-skills points?/ language information?/ or hints?/ - suggestions for further work?/ tests?/ - other kinds? 19 A How flexible the materials need to be? 20 A What price range is necessary? 21 A When and in what quantities should the materials be available?, etc guidan ... authority of the submitted minor thesis entitled ? ?An evaluation of the ESP materials for the nd year students of Faculty of Financial Accounting, Hà Hoa Tiên University in Hà Nam and suggestions for adaptation? ??,... some ESP coursebooks, including one for Financial Accounting, as materials for the ESP teaching and learning at the university The ESP coursebook for the nd year students of Financial Accounting... for educational institutions and educators that whether or not the ESP training programs they offer are suitable for their students and manage to skill them up to today‟s increasingly demanding