Techniques for developing content reading skills for the third year students at the university of odonto and stomatology

Techniques for developing content reading skills for the third year students at the university of odonto and stomatology

PART I: INTRODUCTIONI Rationale.

English nowadays has been a language of internationalization so it is taking a veryimportant role in most fields in personal and professional life as well because of itspopularity in the world Being a student in this new era, she/he has not only opportunities toapproach scientific and technological achievements but also challenges of being backwardsdue to her/his knowledge, and ability In this case, I mean the language knowledge andability of language acquisition because English is now surely the language of communicationin the world If her/his English is excellent, there is little difficulty in understanding andacquiring sufficiently all she/he wants In contrast, there is no chance for her/him tocomprehend, communicate with foreigners when her/his language competence is at lowlevel This is true with students in ESP fields, hereby the students in Medicine specification.Medicine is one of the most difficult categories that everyone finds because of its highlyacademic features, and difficulties in studying Learners who want to be experts in this fieldhave to learn as well as they can not only about theories in textbooks, online documents,books and magazines, newspapers, etc., in the library but also the skillful steps they shouldfollow to treat patients In order to be good at theories, they of course have to read a lot dueto the fact that what they learn at school is not enough, and most of the available documentsin the library, on the internet, or other resources is written in English But most students nowdo not know how to read effectively to get as much knowledge as they desire When readingthey face difficulties of lacking vocabulary, background knowledge, functional words,…And they do not know what to do to overcome these difficulties, which demotivatethemselves from reading

With the wish of arming students with techniques for improving content reading skillsto help them have motivation of reading the required textbooks at university and otheravailable resources, I choose to do my research on the project entitled “Techniques ForDeveloping Content Reading Skills For The Third Year Students At The University of Odontoand Stomatology” because I myself have profound understanding that reading can help

learners to get information to the fullest, and that providing learners with useful techniqueswill motivate them in reading more and more

II Aims of the study

The study is aimed at:

1) better understanding the concepts of reading, content reading, reading comprehensionand reading in ESP teaching and learning.

2) identifying some problems in teaching reading English in Medicine at Odonto Stomatology University (UOS.).

-3) providing the students at UOS with useful techniques of content reading skills.4) identifying how far the techniques can help to improve the quality of teaching and

learning reading ESP.

The study is the hope of the author of the study to make some contributions to theimprovement of teaching reading Medical English at Odonto – Stomatology University.

III Scope of the study

Covering every aspect of language theory and practice in this study is impossible.Therefore, the study focuses on problems in teaching reading experienced by teachers atUOS It is not proposed to deal with other skills: speaking or writing skills

The other subjects of the study are the third year students at UOS Also, the purposes of thecourse are confined to “English in Medicine”.

IV Methodology

This study is conducted mainly basing on the theoretical background extracted frommany published books written by different authors on language of medicine, communicativelanguage teaching, English for specific purposes, material development, approaches to ESPteaching.

In order to carry out this study, the author of the study uses the quantitative method incombination with a variety of methods such as class observation, informal interviews,discussions with the teachers and students at Odonto–Stomatology University Following thequantitative method, all comments, consideration, suggestions given in the thesis are basedon the analysis of the statistics from the survey questionnaires conducted with the teachersand the students at Odonto–Stomatology University Following the above mentioned

methods one more time claim the recommendations stated in the study if they are useful andhelpful for both the teachers and the students.

V Design of the study

The study consists of three main parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion.

Part I introduces rationales, aims of the study as well as scope and methods of the study.Part II comprises four chapters

Chapter I deals with an overview of the theoretical background of the research It is

concerned with the issues relevant to the topic of the research: reading and readingcomprehension, classification of reading, the importance of improving reading skills, roles ofreading teachers and those of reading students, reading in ESP teaching and learning.

Chapter II is a close look at present teaching and learning reading English in Medicine at

Odonto – Stomatology University.

Chapter III explores reading problems experienced by the teachers and students at Odonto –

Stomatology University.

Chapter IV offers some suggestions to improve the teaching of reading English in Medicine

and a sample work for some reading lessons for 3rd year students.

Part III summarizes the issues addressed and presents recommendations for further

improvements and some suggestions for further researches.

PART II: DEVELOPMENT.

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.

In this chapter, the review of the issues most relevant considered as a theoreticalbackground to the study will be provided It consists of definitions of reading, contentreading and reading comprehension, classification of reading according to manner andpurpose, definition of English for specific purpose, the roles that students and teachers playin ESP class, factors affecting reading skills, and difficulties foreign language learnersencounter when reading.

I.1 Definitions of reading, content reading and reading comprehension.I.1.1 What is reading?

It is stated that reading is a kind of culture that people regardless of age, sex, or classshould learn and have Although no one can deny the high frequency of reading in everydaylife, to understand thoroughly what reading or reading comprehension is may not be wellaware by many There have been so many definitions of reading that they cause muchconfusion However, no single definition or explanation can be everyone’s satisfaction.

According to Harmer, it is the eyes and the brain to dominantly participate in thereading process The eyes are on messages and the brain then has to identify the meanings ofthose messages (Harmer (1989:153)) So the speed of reading depends much on themechanical process of looking and perceiving and it is the reader who decides how fast hewants to read the text.

Sharing the same viewpoint on reading, Smith defined that “reading is to understand

author’s thought” (Smith (1985:102)) But the problem posed hereof is that how the reader

understands the written texts because the meanings of a word depend on the context in whichit appears The closer the reader shares the context with the author, the more he/she canunderstand what the author wants to say through the message This mostly depends on thereader’s reading proficiency.

Goodman pointed out that, reading is “a psycholinguistics process by which the

reader – a language user reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encodedby a writer as a graphic display” (Goodman (1988:135)) This act of reconstruction is

considered as a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing, and confirming To make

the matter simple and easy, Nuttal relates reading to communication process and concludes

that “reading means getting out of the text as nearly as possible the message the writer puts

into it” (Nuttal (1996:4)) He also presses the interaction of texts and readers in the reading

process In his opinion, “text is full of meaning like a jug of water, the reader’s mind soaks it

up like sponge”.

To conclude, definitions of reading are many but no definition can possibly expressall the ideas and features of what reading is However, from the opinions above, the authorsall concentrate on the nature of reading that is the necessity for the reader while dealing withreading is to understand the author’s mind not the author’s words.

I.1.2 What is content reading?

According to the dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, contentreading is not like reading for pleasure or relaxation but the reading of books and otherprinted materials that contains information needed for learning in the content areas, such astextbooks or other study materials (Richards, J et al, (1985:81)) This means that withdifferent purposes of reading, readers have different ways of reading to work out thesignificance of the text If the reader reads for pleasure, it is of course less pressure of timeand understanding ability as well for him/her during reading process In contrast, he/she hasto pay his/her greater attention to what he/she is reading to comprehend it to the fullest incontent areas

Regardless of reading for relaxation or reading for information in content areas, it isnecessary to make sense of the reading, otherwise reading is useless There are six types ofknowledge to help readers make sense of the text as follows: syntactic knowledge;morphological knowledge; general world knowledge; sociocultural knowledge; topicknowledge; and genre knowledge (Hedge (2001:189)) Among those types, syntactic andmorphological knowledge are to do with the language itself which help a reader to decodethe language of a text, and the rest four ones enable a reader to work with the language of thetext in order to interpret its meaning When a reader moves through a text, it is essential toemploy all types of knowledge but he/she is to know how to interact them with each other forunderstanding the text most.

I.1.3 What is reading comprehension?

Reading comprehension takes a very important part in teaching and learning reading alanguage and a foreign language as well It can be seen as the ability to retain information of

a written text to the fullest of the readers Grellet defined that “reading comprehension or

understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectivelyas possible” (Grellet, 1981:34) From this point of view, Grellet focuses on readers’ ability

of understanding the meaning of a written text based on the individual’s background

knowledge Having the same point of view with Grellet, Swan stated that “A student is good

at comprehension we mean that he can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get themaximum information of a text with the minimum of understanding” ( Swan,1975: 1) This

means that the student can show his understanding by re-expressing the content of the text inmany ways such as summarizing the text, answering questions, etc.

For a little more different definition of reading comprehension, Richards and Rodgersput their emphasis on the share of opinion between the author and the reader So according to

them, “reading comprehension is best described as an understanding between the author

and the reader” (Richards and Rodgers (1987: 9)) This implies that during the reading

process, readers on the way to discover what the author means and to build meaning forthemselves at the same time in their own language, their thoughts, and their own view of theworld based on their background knowledge It is very difficult, even impossible tounderstand the author’s meaning to the maximum if there is no interaction between theauthor and the reader about language and thoughts Consequently, the reader is as active insearching for meaning as is the writer in creating written language.

From the above mentioned definitions, it is possible to draw a conclusion that it ismeaningless if readers spend time reading but have no comprehension or attain nothing oreven little from a written text In other words, it is no use of reading without comprehension.Therefore, reading comprehension is an important part in teaching and learning a foreignlanguage in general and teaching reading in particular And it is a need to improve readingskills so that reading motivation is increased, benefits from reading such as being able toprogress through assignments faster and to retain more information, learning more and beingmore knowledgeable, improving spelling and grammar skills, and having a more activeimagination … are to the fullest

To sum up, reading comprehension plays a very important part in teaching andlearning a foreign language in general and teaching reading in particular However, thereasons for reading differ from one person to another As a result, the ways we read are alsodifferent In other words, the purposes of reading determine the ways or the styles of reading.Now it is necessary to have a close look at the classification of reading according to mannerand the purposes of reading to identify different types of reading.

I.2 Classification of reading.

I.2.1 Classification of reading according to manner.

According to manner, reading aloud and silent reading are two types of reading in

which “reading aloud involves looking at the text, understanding it and also saying it” (Doff,1988:70) Although reading aloud is considered a way to convey necessary information to theothers, it is an unpopular activity outside classroom.

In fact, reading aloud proves itself to be advantages for learners because it helps themmake the connection between sounds and spelling of letters and words, and assists teachers tocheck learners’ pronunciation However, there are contradictory opinions about it WhileNuttall (1996) refers reading aloud as an aid for beginners to improve their pronunciation,Greenwood (1985) criticizes the overemphasis of the purpose of “teaching pronunciation”through reading aloud.

Unlike reading aloud, silent reading is more often used in both real life andclassroom, and “it is the method we normally use with our native language, and on the wholethe quickest and most efficient” (Lewis, 1985:110) Because reading is a very personal skill,silent reading is a more effective skill for reading comprehension for these reasons: firstlylearners do not need to read all the words in the text, secondly they can read at their ownspeed and if they do not understand the sentence, they can go back, thirdly students can notonly attain the main ideas in a short time but also understand its details thoroughly to answerthe questions, and finally the teacher can check his/her learners’ understanding easily and addreading materials and exercises suitable to their ability.

I.2.2 Classification of reading according to purposes

It is clear to assume that the reasons for reading are different from this person to thatperson because of their uncommon purposes According to purposes, reading is categorized

into intensive reading, extensive reading, skimming and scanning

In terms of intensive reading, Francoise Grellet defined that “Intensive reading

means reading short texts to extract specific information This is an accuracy activityinvolving reading for details” (Grellet,1981:41) It requires readers when performing reading

process to understand not only what the text means but also how the meaning is produced.

According to Nuttall (2000:38), “Intensive reading involves approaching the text under the

guidance of a teacher or a task which forces the student to pay great attention to the text”.

To this kind of reading, readers are required a profound and detailed understanding of the

text They have to know every idea, every hidden information in the text They also have topay attention to the area of the words in the passage through which some hints may beconveyed.

Intensive reading is also associated with the teaching of reading in terms of itscomponent skills Texts are studied intensively in order to introduce and practise readingskills such as distinguishing the main idea of a text from the detail, finding pronoun referents,or guessing the meaning of unknown words.

In terms of extensive reading, reading in quantity with the aim of getting an overall

understanding of the material Readers are more concerned with the meaning of the text thanthe meaning of individual words or sentences

Because extensive reading is to deal with longer texts, it is difficult to attain thegeneral meaning for the whole if reader don’t understand thoroughly and adequately the parts(sentences, paragraphs, chapters) of which it is made up when the whole is not the sum of itsparts, the time of people’s temporary memory is short, and the author and the readers don’thave full interaction with each other As a result, most of extensive reading is done silentlyand out of the classroom and it gives learners of all ages and levels of language proficiencyopportunities to build their language competence, to progress in their reading ability, tobecome more independent in their studies, to acquire cultural knowledge, and to developconfidence and motivation to carry on learning.

From Nuttall’s point of view, “intensive and extensive reading are not just two

contrasting ways of reading but an infinitive variety of interrelated and overlappingstrategies” (Nuttall, 2000:38) These two types of reading, of course, are complementary and

reciprocal with each other, and necessary.

In terms of skimming, Grellet assumed that “when skimming, we go through the

reading material quickly in order to get its main points or the intention of the writer, but notto find the answer to specific questions” (Grellet, 1981:19) That means when to see the text

is useful or not, interesting or uninteresting, it is advisable for reader to read quickly, not tosearch for a specific item and key words Skimming provides an overview of the text.Because the purposes of skimming are to check whether texts are relevant or not, and to setthe scene for more concentrated effort that is to follow if the text is worth reading, skimmingis useful to look at chapter/section headings, summaries and opening paragraphs

If skimming requires a reader to move rapidly through a text to emphasize on relevant

matters and to ignore what is not of importance to him/her, scanning means glancing rapidly

through a text either to search for a specific piece of information or to get an initialimpression of whether the text is suitable for a given purpose (Nuttall, 2000: 49) From this

notion, scanning is a type of reading that involves finding a particular piece of informationlocated in material that is otherwise of no interest to the reader This is widely used inreading comprehension It can be practised with variety of texts such as advertisements,telephone books, dictionaries, indexes, etc Scanning is important and useful as a studytechnique when reading is a requirement of finding particular words or phrases that arerelevant to the task you are doing.

In short, when teaching and learning reading comprehension teachers and studentsshould remember that there are several reading types and an effective reader is the one whocan adapt his style flexibly according to his purpose Generally, readers do not choose to reada text either intensively or extensively, for gist or specific information because a text can bebest tackled by a combination of strategies.

I.3 Reading in English for specific purpose (ESP) teaching and learningI.3.1 Definition of ESP?

What is ESP? This is a big and complicated question that requires much effort inseeing how ESP at the present time relates to the rest of English language teaching (ELT) Ifwe take a look at the tree of ELT (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987:17), it is clear that ESP is a

big multi-levels branch of ELT being nourished by the learning and communication roots.According to Hutchinson and Waters, ESP must be seen as an approach not as a product

(Hutchinson and Waters, 1987:19) It is an approach which is directed by specific andapparent reasons for learning ESP Students' goal of 1earning a second 1anguage mightacquire not only general linguistics competencies but also academic and job-related skills

Strevens (1988:1), by contrast, stated that “ESP is a particular case of the general

category of special – purpose language teaching” In his work, he is in the position of

illustrating his opinion by naming four absolute characteristics of ESP as follows:- ESP is designed to meet the learners’ specified needs

- ESP has the content relating to particular disciplines, occupations and activities.- ESP is centered on language appropriate to those activities in syntax, lexis, discourse,

semantics, and analysis of the discourse.- ESP is in contrast with “General English”

In order to make the above mentioned absolute characteristics of ESP distinctive,other two variable characteristics are set up Firstly, ESP may be restricted to skills to belearnt (for example reading only) Secondly, ESP may not be taught according to any pre-ordained methodology All of the characteristics of ESP make us come to an end thatteaching and learning ESP is a challenging task for both teachers and students

Widdowson, on the other hand, argued that it is “the way in which purpose is defined

and the manner of its implementation” (Widdowson, 1990: 6) to make the distinction

between EGP (English for General Purposes) and ESP, not the problem of specificity ofpurpose In addition, he put the specification of objectives in ESP course design in a closerelation with training in order to provide learners with a restricted competence to enable themto cope with certain clearly defined tasks.

From the above mentioned viewpoints, when dealing with ESP, it is necessary toidentify two central areas in ESP which are content and methodology In terms of content, itis important to concern about the scope of a particular course in comparison with the totalityof the language to make the ESP course balanced in content so that it is not either too narrowor broad In terms of methodology, ESP courses aim to develop linguistic skills relating toparticular spheres of activity, not only the nature of the linguistic items introduced, but theways in which they are introduced and how they are practised So it is also cruciallyimportant for teachers to apply good methods in ESP classes because good methodologydecides most of the success of the classroom.

Generally speaking, because of the characteristics of ESP, when learning on ESPcourses, activities to be carried out during learning process should take place as authenticallyas possible The requirement of authenticity means that learning materials should use actualtexts produced by people working in the ESP field under consideration And the textsinvolved in learning materials should be content-based ones That means they should focuson specific problems that people are likely to encounter in their everyday working lives in theESP field If the learning materials of ESP courses cover these two areas, many importantlinguistic items relevant to the ESP field may be introduced and practised.

And basing on the above characteristics of ESP, we can come to a conclusion thatreading in General English somehow differ from ESP teaching and learning in terms of thepurposes, the teachers, the students, the texts and their roles.

I.3.2 The roles of reading students and those of reading teachers.

I.3.2.1 The roles of reading students.

In a language classroom, it is not the teacher who takes dominant roles but the student

to play a reciprocal role such as “active learning, monitoring comprehension, learning text

talk, taking risks, and learning not to cheat oneself” (Nuttall, 1982: 33) According to this

author, in the reading process, firstly the student is to take responsibility of being active and

in charge of what they do because “reading is learnt rather than taught, and only the

learners can do the learning”, secondly the learners should learn to develop the qualities of a

good reader like awareness, consciousness, alert so that they can understand what to do tomonitor their comprehension of the subject matters, thirdly the learners learn how to maketexts talk which means they have to join in talking about texts in class, fourthly when joiningin the activity of talking about texts, the learners are willing to take risks of admitting andcorrecting the mistakes they make in class if of course the classroom atmosphere encouragesit, and lastly it is the learners to take advantages for themselves from reading not other onesbecause when reading something, they have chance to acquire something from that, and ofcourse they can develop themselves or otherwise they get nothing if they do not want to read.To sum up, reading learners play a very significant role in reading processes It is thelearners to cooperate with the teachers to make the lessons successful And it is the learnersto identify their roles in the classroom to act to their fullest for comprehending the subjectmatters best.

I.3.2.2 The roles of reading teachers.

The roles that teachers in general play in bringing about desired learning and changesin student behavior and enhancing student development are numerous According toKenneth, a teacher takes many parts in his/her teaching career, some of which are as follow:

“The first and most notable role a teacher performs is that of instructional expert: the

person who plans, guides, and evaluates learning” (Kenneth, 2007:3) He also considers this

role as a kind of core role that the others tend to support In order to fully and successfullytake this part, it is the teacher to make information meaningful so that students can rememberit and are able to transfer it to a variety of situations To reach that aim, the teacher has totake many factors into consideration such as what to teach, what teaching materials to use,the best method to teach the selected content, and how to evaluate the intended learning The

second important role that a teacher does is a “manager – to order and structure the learning

environment” It is certainly possible to say yes to this opinion because the teacher must not

only do his/her right performance of teaching but also be sure to keep the classroom groupand its individual members staying within the limits set by the school, the limits set by theteacher, and the limits set by the tasks at hand but maximizing learning The third role of a

teacher is to be a counselor in the classroom Although not all teachers are born to be a

counselor or psychologist, from time to time they must be prepared to respond constructivelyto behavior problems caused by students in the process of their learning and development.Because only when the teacher owns good human relations skills and communications skills,possesses a skill of thorough understanding of people and their behaviors, he/she will be ableto complete his/her tasks in working environment and normal daylife in a good way

Having the same viewpoint with Moore, Wright (1987) and other authors named

some more roles such as a facilitator, an organizer, an evaluator, a curriculum developer, a

material writer and even a friend that both general English teachers and ESP ones share.

In order to reflect the roles of ESP teacher, it is clear to state that beside the roles of ageneral English teacher that are mentioned above such as an instructional expert, a manager,a counselor, a facilitator, an organizer, an evaluator, a curriculum developer (orcourse/syllabus designer), a material writer and even a friend, an ESP must take other parts.And these other parts will vary according to the type of course and syllabus, and theteaching/learning environment (Jordan, 1997) Therefore one of the most important qualities

of an ESP teacher is flexibility As Jordan pointed out that “The key quality needed by the

ESP teacher is flexibility: the flexibility to change from being a general language to being aspecific purpose teacher, and the flexibility to cope with different groups of students, often ata very short notice” (Jordan, 1997: 122).

Performing as a teacher of ESP is by no means easy for any foreign language teacherat first because most of them have not been trained to be ESP teachers And regardless of thenormal functions of a classroom teacher, there are more tasks that the ESP teachers have to

take such as “needs analysis, syllabus design, materials writing or adaptation and

evaluation” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 157) So it is important that the ESP teacher must

know something about the subject matters of the ESP materials This means that there is no

need for the ESP teacher to excellently specialize at the subject matter but rather “an

interested student of the subject matter” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 163) According to

these authors, the kind of knowledge requirement toward ESP teachers is inclusive of:

 a positive attitude towards the ESP content

 a knowledge of the fundamental principles of the subject area an awareness of how much they probably know

Through teaching the materials, reading books, looking up dictionaries, discussingwith colleagues, consulting with a specialist of the subject area, sharing experience withstudents, etc the ESP teacher can “pick up” a lot of knowledge of the subject matter.

Sharing the same point of view with Hutchinson and Waters, Jordan (1997) proposed

some roles that the ESP teacher must act as a facilitator, organizer, manager, advisor topromote learning, especially self-learning In his work, Jordan stated that “it is rarely

possible to use a particular text book without the need for supplementary material, andsometimes no really suitable published material exists for certain of the identifiedneeds”(Jordan, 1997:14-15) This means that it is the ESP teacher to act as a materialprovider involving choosing relevant published material, adapting material when published

material is not suitable.

Another role that the ESP teachers plays is that they should act as an evaluator which

involves the testing of students, the evaluation of courses and teaching materials From thepoint of view by Dudley-Evans and St John (1997), with different purposes the ESP teachersmust be able to devise unfamiliar kinds of tests, and the common kind is often designed to be

achievement tests which are used to assess “how much learners have gained from a course”.And evaluating course design and teaching material should be an “on-going process” The

information collected from discussions with students or the teacher’s observation is also ofgreat importance for the adaptation and improvements in the syllabus and materials.

It is clear that reading involves the skills that students must learn for themselves and ateacher’s success is measured by the fact that how far his/her students can do without help.As a result, providing students as many skills of learning reading as possible is a goodadvice And both ESP students and ESP teachers must act as reciprocal individuals in theclassroom to reflect themselves to the fullest.

I.4 Factors affecting reading skills

There are various factors affecting reading skills that both teachers and students haveto take into consideration when doing reading process According to Aebersold and Field(1997:23), those factors are as follows:

- Cognitive development and cognitive style orientation at the time of beginning L2/FLstudy.

- Language proficiency in the L1.

- Metacognitive knowledge of L1 structure, grammar, and syntax.- Language proficiency in an L2/FL.

- Degree of difference between the L1 and an L2/FL (writing systems, rhetoricalstructures, appropriate strategies)

- Cultural orientation which includes:

+ attitudes toward text and purpose for reading.+ types of reading skills and strategies used in the L1.

+ types of reading skills and strategies used or appropriate in the L2/FL.+ beliefs about the reading process (use of inference, memorization, nature ofcomprehension)

+ knowledge of text types in the L1 (formal schemata)+ background knowledge (content schemata)

Among the factors mentioned above, language proficiency in an L2 and backgroundknowledge are likely to be the two affecting most the success of reading process becausewhen reading readers always bring their background knowledge into reading texts tocomprehend them, and if their language competence is good enough, it is much easier forthem to understand and acquire the L2 they are learning Therefore, to help students able toread texts, or documents in the classroom to the fullest, it is advisable for teachers to identifywhat level of language proficiency their students are at, and how much they understand therequired reading texts so that they could give their students suitable texts to read Besides,teachers should be aware of the rest factors affecting reading skills to help their students tothe maximum Specifically, teachers should motivate their students by providing them withas many reading skills as possible but know to focus them on suitable ones when practising,and try to decrease the difference between their native language and the target one

I.5 Reading difficulties for foreign language learners

No one can deny the great importance of reading in a foreign language to academicstudies, personal development and professional success As a result, readers can acquire thetarget language to the fullest if they have strong reading skills To the fact that, withoutstrong reading skills, learners may find class discussions to be uncomfortable, or somewhat

intimidating If learners feel that they aren’t getting enough from the reading, they may fallbehind, or miss out on a great book, and they are not benefiting from the experience and loseout an opportunity to learn However, reading in a language which is not the learners’ mothertongue is much more difficult Problems in reading for foreign learners come from manyvariables such as reading skills, language competence or readers’ cultural backgroundknowledge In this section, the focus is on two main problems that foreign language learnersoften face with They are language problems and reading skill problems.

I.5.1 Language problems

It is the fact that the reader’s knowledge in the foreign language and that in the nativespeakers are not the same In other words, the native languages and the target language donot often share much similarity of opinions, ideas because of many elements such asgrammar structure, syntax function, culture orientation, etc So it is advisable and better toguess or predict the meaning of unknown words in paragraphs to infer the ideas implied intexts in case readers have imperfect knowledge of the language because when doing thereading tasks, readers often make choices regardless of wrong or uncertain cues they know.One more problem readers encounter is that the memory span in a foreign language in theearly stages of its acquisition is usually shorter than in our native language As a result,

weaving previous cues together then is more difficult in a foreign language than in a mother

tongue; and at all levels, and at all time, there is interference of the native language Orreaders always bring background knowledge in their native language into reading andacquiring the target one.

Sharing the same idea, Alderson (1984) agreed that a lack of appropriate linguisticknowledge constrains the transfer of reading skills and strategies from L1 to L2.

When readers deal with a reading text, the first problem they often face is that theymay have to work with unfamiliar topic The content of the text is comparatively new anddifficult to the readers This problem is due to a lack of background knowledge If the readerslack background knowledge, it is difficult for them to get involved in the activities, especiallyfor reading ones They will not be able to use their existing knowledge to comprehend thenew material and more importantly they will lose their interest in reading the text.

Another difficulty readers face is vocabulary and grammatical structures This isspecially true when they deal with idioms, proverbs, synonyms, antonyms, etc., which can beconsidered to have an impact on the readers’ motivation According to Aebersold and Field

(1997), it is necessary for a reader to know vocabulary and structures in order to get meaningfrom a text This is especially true to second or foreign language readers because it is not allreaders to possess enough vocabulary and structures to read what they want But most are onthe way to enrich themselves with more new words and structures to infer the meaning of thesentences when dealing with reading texts Therefore, when the readers’ limited knowledgeof vocabulary and grammatical structures, they will be unwilling to explore the text

These problems are the difficulties that foreign language learners, G.E students, ESPstudents share in common Besides, ESP students encounter other difficulties in dealing withterminologies, concepts, tables, charts, graphs etc in their specific field All the abovementioned difficulties interfere with their process of learning reading ESP and set challengesfor ESP teachers whose duty is to find ways to help their students to overcome them.

In brief, this chapter is an overview of reading and reading comprehension Also, aclose look at the difficulties that foreign language learners encounter when learning readingis taken In the next chapter, an attempt will be made to bring about an overall picture of thepresent situation of ESP teaching and learning at Odonto - Stomatology University.

I.5.2.Reading skill problems

Reading skills should be employed in reading processes to make the readingeffective According to Alderson (2000: 9-10), there are 8 skills of reading such as:

- recalling word meanings

- drawing inferences about the meaning of a word in context

- finding answers to questions answered explicitly or in paraphrase

- weaving together ideas in the content

- drawing inferences from the content

- recognizing a writer’s purpose, attitude, tone and mood

- identifying a writer’s technique

- following the structure of a passage

Of the above skills, readers often expose most to be problems because when makingreading processes, it is clear to identify that they read in a foreign language slower than intheir first language Moreover, they do not know how to use the appropriate ways to read.They just look at every single word, read slowly from the beginning to the end andconsequently fail to grasp the general meaning of the passage Sometimes, they mayencounter a lot of new words, a long text or an unfamiliar topic Yet they can not concentrate

well on the text and when they get to the last paragraph they may not recall what they have

read in the previous ones In other words, they find difficult, even impossible in “weaving

together ideas in the content”

It is common that there are new words, new structures, and ideas in a reading text toevery language learner If a learner does not know how to make use of grammatical, logicaland cultural clues and have a guess or predicting ability, he will read the text with lesscomprehension than he might expect And poor reading comprehension may result indisinterest in reading He may be trapped in a vicious circle:

doesn’t understand read slowly

doesn’t read much doesn’t enjoy reading

Diagram 1: The vicious circle of the weak readers (Nuttall, 1982: 167)

From the above diagram, one of the important factors affecting the effectiveness ofreading processes is learner’s motivation toward reading When a student does not readmuch, he/she of course does not feel like reading that leads to the speed of reading is slow.And when he/she does not read much, he/she will not understand the subject matter as he/sheexpects which also makes him/her read slow.

To conclude, in most cases, reading and understanding a text is often a challengingtask for a reader during a reading process if he/she does not have full background knowledgeof the subject matter, his/her low reading speed is low to keep pace with other betterstudents’, the topics are unfamiliar, and he has not enough reading strategies in hand, etc Allof those difficulties prevent him/her from understanding to the fullest the writer’s purposeand ideas and lead to decrease in reading motivation So it is necessary to create learners’interest, enhance their motivation in teaching reading.

CHAPTER II: THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TEACHING ANDLEARNING CONTENT ENGLISH READING AT THE UNIVERSITY

OF ODONTO AND STOMATOLOGY.

II.1 An over view on the University of Odonto and Stomatology, theobjectives of teaching and learning reading English in Medicine.

Founded in 2002, the University of Odonto and Stomatology (UOS.) is a younguniversity of about 700 students It has had its own reputation in training dentists to be withskillful hands and intensive academic knowledge in the field of Dentistry In the university,English is only taught as a non-major subject in 300 class-hours during the first two and ahalf school years and only 60 class-hours is for teaching ESP As a result, it is a real need forthe students to learn techniques to acquire the ESP basic knowledge, i.e., English inMedicine, especially in Dentistry in order to gain high scores in their mid-term and finalexams for scholarship one hand and not re-taking the exams on the other hand

Furthermore, the University of Odonto and Stomatology has been now co-operatingwith other universities worldwide such as France, the USA, Japan, Thailand, China, etc., tofurther train the students to be better in the content field So how to develop enough goodskills of General English to have ability of dealing with exercises required in class andcommunicating with foreigners, and to gain adequate basic ESP knowledge to understandwhat is taught in co-operative classes are also the students’ learning targets Besides, so as torespond to the demand of the society today, the students need to have a good command ofEnglish at workplace to communicate with foreign people or to read documents written inEnglish And for another reason that outside classrooms the students can read the documents,magazine, newspapers, articles, and other resources available in the library, on the internet,and so on without the teachers’ help And it is the teachers’ task to familiarize their studentswith ESP and provide them with useful strategies and techniques for effective contentreading.

II.2 English language teachers at the university and methods of teaching.

In the modern age of information, reading is truly a fundamental survival skill notonly to acquire knowledge in classrooms but also to communicate in the world outside Themore benefits a reader gets from reading, the more experience he/she will have It is commonknowledge that, the very survival of the adolescent who leaves school without the ability tounderstand a sentence may be jeopardized So it is the responsibility of the teacher toguarantee that the individual, upon leaving the classroom, will be capable of functioningsatisfactorily in the daily situations that he will encounter This is specially true to the contentfield which forces learners to train themselves more outside the classroom to update themand meet the demand of their work.

Being aware of the great importance of ESP in the teaching career, the students’ studyand their future jobs, teachers at the University of Odonto and Stomatology always try theirbest to teach themselves the knowledge in the content field, to employ effective techniquesfor successful lessons, and to help their students improve their reading skills so that they canlearn as an autonomy outside the classroom But it is a fact to the teachers at the UOS thatthey are to take up ESP teaching but they are not trained in doing that difficult task Thatleads to many difficulties for them to encounter when performing their roles in ESPclassrooms The difficulties here are lack of professional knowledge, and the obstacles inchoosing appropriate teaching methods As a result, they do not feel self-confident enough toteach ESP in spite of their positive attitudes to it

Among the two mentioned above difficulties, how to choose an appropriate teachingmethodology is of greater concerns because a suitable method of teaching accounts much forthe lesson success It is usual when ESP teachers at the University of Odonto andStomatology attach themselves to the traditional methods of teaching such as the Grammar-Translation method, especially in ESP reading lessons This method focuses on accuracy, thedetailed analysis of grammar rules, not on the acquisition of language skills It ischaracterized by the use of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction and communicationin the classroom By using this method, it is the teacher to be the center in the classroomspeaking most of the time, explaining new terminologies and translating the text intoVietnamese Students often listen and take notes passively Questions are rarely raised in theclass if they do not encounter new words or structures in the text As a result, this methodleads to lack of motivation and few chances for the students to practise speaking English; inother words, to improve their communicative competence So it is not feasible to apply thisout of date method in teaching reading ESP when students now play center roles and teachers

should be facilitators who help their students rather than tell them what to do By raisingstudents' awareness of reading as a skill that requires active engagement, and by explicitlyteaching reading strategies, teachers help their students develop both the ability and theconfidence to handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom Inthis way students can improve their reading ability and enrich their knowledge andcommunicative competence in the target language

II.3 Learners and Content Learning Requirements

The learners at the University of Odonto and Stomatology come from all over thecountry The starting point of learning English is different among the students from the citiesand the ones from the countryside Some students have had 7-year knowledge meanwhilesome others have had only 3 years of learning English, even some have never learnt Englishat high school This means their language competence is at unequal levels

During the first two-year learning at UOS., the students are supposed to haveacquired the most basic English language skills at pre-intermediate level Consequently,problems arising during the courses are due to individual difference in learning styles,attitudes, motivation, etc The fifth term is the last term the students learning English atuniversity but the first term they have a chance to deal with English in Medicine It is a factthat most of the students have to face difficulties when having discussions about topicsrelated to Medicine such as Taking a History, Examining a Patient, Investigations, Making aDiagnosis, Treatment, etc… due to lack of terminology in Medicine Another problem is thatmost of them tend to depend too much on the text books and the teachers This dependencehabit of learning is an obstacle in their learning process.

According to interviews, questionnaires, and observation; the students’ needs andrequirement in learning English in general and ESP in particular are very clear that they canuse English both inside and outside the classroom, both in daily life communication and infurther academic learning after leaving the university The terms “use” here is specified asbeing able to:

- understand what teachers and friends say in the classroom.- communicate with foreigners.

- produce the language to make its sense (I mean here speaking and writing skills)- read books, articles, newspaper, magazines, prescriptions, and other available

resources.

- self-study outside the classroom….

But to get to the above target, the students expect their ESP teachers to integratedifferent useful approaches for more interesting lessons These approaches will be mentionedlatter in terms of techniques for improving content reading skills.

To sum up, what the students are in need and require from learning English in generaland ESP in particular at the University of Odonto and Stomatology is not different fromthose of other universities The distinction is the way they do to meet the needs andrequirements and how their teachers employ the learning strategies to help them.

II.4 Materials and Assessments.

As mentioned above, the ESP learning time for the third year students at theUniversity of Odonto and Stomatology lasts only 60 class hours which is too short to acquirewhat is called basic knowledge of a very academic field like Medicine So it is really achallenge for not only the students at different language levels but also the teachers to fulfilltheir teaching and learning tasks A big question that what ESP materials can cover basic andsimple but full knowledge is posed With all the efforts of the teachers in the ForeignLanguage Department at UOS, the material in ESP entitled “English in Medicine” by EricH.Glendinning and Beverly A.S Holmstrom is chosen for the two years of 2007 and 2008.However, it includes 5 out of 7 units from the origin version because of its appropriate lengthand some further terminology in Dentistry is added at the back of the book This course bookconsists of 5 long units established in forms of communication Each unit deals with onefundamental issue pertaining to Medicine from taking a history, examining a patient,investigations, making a diagnosis, to treatment Each unit has four sections Section 1introduces new language related to the unit theme Section 2 provides further practice andintroduces a variety of medical documents Section 3 focuses on reading and section 4 bringstogether the language studied earlier in the unit in the context of a case history which runsfrom Unit 1 to 4

The aim of this book is to develop speaking and listening skills primarily but attentionis also given to reading skills, especially the use of reference materials and journal articles.Practice is also provided in writing referral letters and completing a range of medialdocuments However, the teachers and students have found the material rather unsuitablewith themselves for some reasons Firstly, this material is for doctors and medical students todevelop their communication skills not to cover background knowledge in the field of

Medicine in general and Dentistry in particular Secondly, to go through all parts in each unittakes the teachers most of the time so they rarely have time to review and help their studentsrecall or practise what they learnt when they finish every thing in the unit Thirdly, thereading texts are long, boring and even useless due to their academic features The studentsdon’t find those readings stimulating In their opinion, except the reading part in Unit 1, therest readings are useful for researchers Finally, all the terminology in Dentistry placed in thelist at the back of the book makes itself difficult to remember in spite of the fact that this partshould be the most important for future dentists like the students at UOS.

In brief, the currently used course book for the third year students of the Universityof Odonto and Stomatology is actually inappropriate for learning ESP from the beginning ofthe course However, it is more of the teachers’ duty to help their students not only tocomplete their learning program at the university but also to have in hands useful techniquesfor improving skills, especially reading one so that they can continuously learn by themselvesoutside the class.

II.5 An evaluation on learners’ learning ESP.

Due to the above mentioned factors, the learning attitude during the class time, it cancome to an evaluation on the learners’ learning ESP as follows: Firstly, most of the studentshave bad reading habits like moving lips when reading; pronouncing words in the voice boxof the throat without making sounds; rereading immediately when a word, phrase, orsentence is difficult to make sense; reading one word at a time not in phrases All of thesebad habits leads to slow speed of reading Secondly, the students don’t have motivation ofreading because of the authentic but unsuitable learning material, and teaching methods.Consequently, the learning process hasn’t been successful as the students expect Thirdly,English acquisition for EFL students is mainly developed through reading and composingEnglish texts But both the teachers and students tend to separate these two skills As a result,the separation of reading and writing instruction in EFL contexts makes students perceivereading as a decoding process and writing as only a task of constructing grammaticallycorrect essays This leads to the shortage of opportunities and resources to help them becomereflective readers and writers And it is a reality that the students at the University of Odontoand Stomatology do not have good sense of understanding the required reading texts.

To conclude, the students at UOS should be provided with useful and effectivetechniques to improve their reading skills so that they can read English inside and outside theclass to the maximum.

CHAPTER III: THE STUDYIII.1 The participants

In order to conduct the study for findings of current teaching and learning ESP atUOS., and suggested solutions for those findings; a sample of 05 full-time teachers of theforeign language department and 87 third year students at UOS is chosen to answer thesurvey questionnaire and informal interviews

The selected teachers have at least three years of teaching English and one year ofteaching ESP at the university It is certain that they have not only the knowledge of Englishbut also some knowledge of the subject matter Consequently, the study will be conductedwith useful and practical information about ESP training

As for the students, all of them are studying at the University of Odonto andStomatology under the direct guidance of those teachers The students’ learning English timeranges from 6 to 12 years - the time they learn at a primary school, secondary school, or highschool And their English competence after 2 years at the university is supposed to be at pre-intermediate level They have some background knowledge of the content field – Medicine.As a result, they can give reliable evaluation of what the author of the study is concernedwith.

It is really advantageous to the author of the study’s eliciting information from thechosen participants because most of them showed their interest in the study and were willingto support the author of the study Among those participants, except 100 percentage of theteachers gave their answers to the questionnaire, 80 out of the 87 selected students filled inthe survey questionnaire Although the collected information is from the small number ofsubjects, it is useful, practical and credible for reasons that the size of the university is stillsmall and teaching - learning ESP at this research field is only at early stage.

III.2 The setting of the study.

At the University of Odonto and Stomatology, English – a compulsory subject istaught in a formal setting, namely a class for two phases of two and a half school years Inthe first phase, the students study general English for the first four terms The course book

used in this phase is “New Headway – Elementary and Pre-Intermediate” by Liz & John

Soars (Oxford University Press-1996) In the second phase lasting one term, they have achance to learn English in Medicine