Factors affecting esp vocabulary learning At Hanoi community college

Factors affecting esp vocabulary learning At Hanoi community college

Title:

Factors Affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning at Hanoi Community College

part A – Introduction1 Rationale

English learning has been popular in Vietnam over the last few decades Especially, learningEnglish has become a burgeoning need when Vietnam fosters its international relations Every dayan increasing number of people learn and use English for different purposes.

In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam, English for Specific Purposes(ESP) has recently received a great deal of attention A teacher or institution may wish to provideteaching materials that will fit the specific subject area of particular learners Such materials may notbe available commercially In addition, ESP courses can vary from one week of intensive study to anhour a week for three years or more with different schools’ timetables and for different traininglevel For these reasons, there is already an established tradition of ESP teachers producing in-housematerials They are written by the teachers of a particular institution for the students at thatinstitution This is often something difficult for teachers because few have had any training in theskills and techniques of materials writing; needless to say about their limited knowledge in thespecific area (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987)

In Vietnam, English seems to be learnt and taught in non-English environment, so reading is animportant means to get knowledge in ESP, and also a means for further study In other words,learners “read to learn” (Burn, 1988:11) This is true for the students at Hanoi Community College,where learners are future technical engineers and technicians who learn English in order to be able tohandle subject-related written materials in English and to work with modern technologicalequipment So ESP materials used at Hanoi Community College now are often reading materialswith the topics in the specific area “Vocabulary learning has long had a synergistic association withreading; each activity nourishes the other” (Coady and Huckin, 1997:2) So if one wants to read ESPmaterials well he needs to learn ESP vocabulary.

Given the central role of vocabulary and lexis as carrier content in ESP, also confirmed bydifferent authors, for example Robinson (1991: 4) who says that: “It may often be thought that acharacteristic, or even a critical feature, of ESP is that a course should involve specialist language(especially terminology) and content.” or Dudley-Evans and St John (1998: 5) that include lexisamong absolute defining features of ESP: “ESP is centered on the language (grammar, lexis,

register), skills, discourse and genres appropriate to these activities.”, the reading materials used atthe college concentrates on the vocabulary or the terminology in the specific fields.

With a short duration of about 30 to 60 class hours, one of the major aims for an ESP course atHanoi Community College is to obtain basic ESP vocabulary Thus, ESP vocabulary learning is alsothe focal point when taking an ESP course However, vocabulary instruction has been paid lessattention than it should have been Word retention has always been a difficult problem for students atthe college It would be so ambitious with multiple goals (e.g., reading proficiency, grammar rules,and vocabulary) in limited time Thus, vocabulary was weekly lists of words and definitions with theadvice "study these." If any kind of vocabulary activity was offered, it would not be corrected andreturned for a week or more, by which time students had usually forgotten the words Too many newwords in the specific field were given every week; too little time or even no time was spent onmemorizing or recycling those words; little feedback was returned Consequently, students entered acycle of quick-cramming: memorizing the words and definitions briefly before a task and thenforgetting them In other words, the new vocabulary never made it from memorization,understanding onto their uses

For all these reasons, to find out the difficulties of the students when learning ESP vocabulary(accounting terms) at Hanoi Community College and the causes of their difficulties is necessary.Then, the factors that most affect their vocabulary learning in an ESP context can be identified Thiswill make it possible to give suggestions for the teachers and learners to improve the teaching andlearning of ESP vocabulary at Hanoi Community College.

2 Aims of the Study

The aims of this study are to find out what factors affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning and thusgive some instructions to help students learn ESP Vocabulary better.

A theoretical framework for the study is focused on the second language vocabulary learning, thevocabulary learning of English for Specific Purposes and factors affecting vocabulary acquisition.

3 Research Questions

1 What are the factors affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning at Hanoi Community College? 2 What are the suggestions to help the learners learn ESP vocabulary better?

4 Scope of the Study

The study limited itself to the investigation of some factors affecting ESP Vocabulary Learningfor the students at Hanoi Community College It focuses not only on the factors that affect thesecond-year students at the college but also on words, expressions and terms of the book “Englishfor Finance and Accounting” edited by a group of authors at the college This book is now beingused as the textbook in class for the targeted students

There are two levels of training at HCC: College level and Vocational Training level Within itsscope, the study is limited only to the ESP for Vocational students.

The results should be interpreted within the college teaching context The investigation primarilydeals with reading in an ESP course-“English for Finance and Accounting”

5 Method of the Study

The methodologies adopted for this case study are - a survey questionnaire with 100 students and

- informal interviews with teachers and students during the course

The questionnaire consisted of 30 questions grouped into 3 main parts which help to seek forinformation concerning students’ background, students’ attitudes to ESP vocabulary learning, thearea of their difficulties in ESP vocabulary learning and their expectations of ESP material andteachers’ methodology.

6 Design of the Study

The thesis is composed of three parts Part A - introduction

This part provides the rationale, aims, scopes, and methodology of the study, which offersreaders an overview of how the research idea is generated, what its goals are, and what researchmethodology is adopted.

Part B - development

This part is divided into two chapters

Chapter 1: Literature Review

This chapter provides the theoretical background for the study It focuses on the second languagevocabulary learning, and some factors affecting vocabulary learning

Chapter 2: The investigation

This is the main part of the study It reports the collection and analysis of the data and majorfindings of the study

Part C - conclusion

This part summarizes the findings, states the limitation of the research, draws teachingimplications and offers suggestions for further research.

part b – developmentChapter 1: Literature Review

Since the mid-1980s various studies of vocabulary acquisition and related areas of lexicalresearch in second language acquisition have been carried out The role of vocabulary in secondlanguage learning has been given greater interest (Coady and Huckin, 1997: ix) In this chapter, theimportant role of vocabulary in second language teaching and learning as well as in the teaching andlearning of English for finance and accounting is discussed In addition, different types ofvocabulary learning and factors that affect vocabulary learning are presented and commented upon.

1.1 Vocabulary in second language learning and teaching1.1.1 Definitions of vocabulary:

There have been different definitions of vocabulary Penny Ur defined vocabulary as “the wordswe teach in the foreign language However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a singleword: a compound of two or three words or multi-word idioms” (Ur, 1996:60) A similar definitionfrom Richards and Platt is that vocabulary is “a set of lexemes, including words, compound wordsand idioms” (Richards and Platt, 1992: 400) These statements indicate that vocabulary is “the totalnumber of words in a language” (Hornby, 1995:1331).

1.1.2 The status of vocabulary in language teaching and learning

The status of vocabulary in language teaching and learning has changed dramatically in the lasttwo decades “Since the mid-1980s there has been a renewed interest in the role of vocabulary insecond language learning” (Coady and Huckin, 1997: ix) There have been studies on the nature ofthe bilingual lexicon, vocabulary acquisition, lexical storage, lexical retrieval, and the use ofvocabulary by second language learners.

McCarthy stated that “the biggest component of any language course is vocabulary” (McCarthy,1990: viii) “No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the soundsof L2 are mastered, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2just cannot happen in any meaningful way.”

Vocabulary is an essential component of language “Vocabulary is central to language” and“words are of critical importance to the typical language learner.” (Coady and Huckin, 1997: 1).

Nowadays vocabulary is considered an important aspect of teaching and learning a foreignlanguage Second language vocabulary acquisition has become an increasingly interesting topic ofdiscussion for researchers, teachers, curriculum designers, theorists, and others involved in secondlanguage learning and teaching.

1.2 Vocabulary learning

1.2.1 Vocabulary learning - What is involved in knowing a word?

There have been many definitions as to what it is exactly to know a word “knowing” a worddoes not simply mean being able to recognize what it looks and sounds like or being able to give theword’s dictionary definition Knowing a word by sight and sound and knowing its dictionarydefinition are not the same as knowing how to use the word correctly and understanding it when it isheard or seen in various contexts (Miller & Gildea, 1987).

Penny Ur (1996) said that when vocabulary is introduced to learners, what need to be taught areform-written and spoken; grammar; collocation; aspects of meaning: denotation, connotation,appropriateness, meaning relationships; and word formation

According to Nation (1990:30-33) and Taylor (1990:1-4), knowing a word incorporates a largeamount of information It involves not only knowing its spelling, morphology, pronunciation,meaning, or the equivalent of the word in the learner’s mother tongue but also knowing itscollocations, register, polysemy, and even its homonym There is also the issue of precision withwhich we use a word, how quickly we understand a word, and how well we understand and usewords in different modes, receptive or productive; and for different purposes (e.g., formal vs.informal occasions) (Beck & McKeown, 1991; Nagy & Scott, 2000) In addition, it is important toconsider how well the students need to know a particular word in relation to their needs and currentlevel.

It is generally agreed that knowledge of the following is necessary in order to know a word:-form, pronunciation and spelling

-word structure, bound root morpheme and common derivations of the word and its inflections

-syntactic pattern of the word in a phrase and sentence-meaning, referential, affective/connotation, pragmatic-lexical relations, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy-common locations (Schmitt and McCarthy, 1997: 141).

There are two factors that have great impacts and help to create the lexical competence: ExplicitVocabulary Instruction and Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Each of these has influences ondifferent stages of vocabulary learning and cause explicit vocabulary learning and implicitvocabulary learning.

1.2.2 Explicit (or direct) vocabulary learning

In direct vocabulary learning, learners do exercises and activities that focus their attention onvocabulary (Nation, 1990:2) For example, when students are doing word-building exercises,guessing the meaning of unknown words in context when this is done as a class exercise, learningwords in word lists, or playing vocabulary games, they are learning vocabulary explicitly Suchactivities usually take place in class with a lot of help and instruction from teachers To makesuccessful instruction for explicit vocabulary learning, teachers often consider the following to teachhigh-frequency words, to maximize vocabulary learning by teaching word families instead ofindividual words, and to consider meaning associations attached to the word Thanks to such carefulexplanations and guidance of teachers, students at low and intermediate levels may acquirevocabulary explicitly before they begin implicit learning mainly by themselves.

Explicit vocabulary learning plays an important role in vocabulary acquisition Thus, manytheorists and researchers, including Decarrico (2001) recommended that implicit vocabulary learningshould not be used without explicit learning at the low and intermediate levels.

1.2.3 Implicit (or incidental) vocabulary learning

Implicit vocabulary learning has been explained by researchers as incidental vocabulary learning.It is the learning of new words as a by-product of a meaning-focused communicative activity, suchas reading, listening, and interaction It occurs through “multiple exposures to a word in differentcontexts” (Huckin and Coady, 1999).

In implicit vocabulary learning, learners are able to pick up vocabulary through extensivereading, through communicative interactions, through exposure to natural input such as movies, TV.However, for implicit vocabulary learning to be successful, the learners should have a sightvocabulary of 2,000 to 3,000 As well, the input should be comprehensible and interesting to thelearners; unknown words should be no more than 2% Besides, input enhancement may be beneficialand guessing should be encouraged and guessing strategies should be trained.

If exploited in a suitable way, implicit vocabulary learning will have many advantages Firstly, itis contextualized, giving the learner a richer sense of a word’s use and meaning than can be providedin traditional paired-associate exercises Secondly, it is pedagogically efficient in that it enables twoactivities – vocabulary acquisition and reading – to occur at the same time Thirdly, it is moreindividualized and learner-based because the vocabulary being acquired is dependent on thelearner’s own selection of reading materials Lastly, presentation, consolidation and lexical/semanticdevelopment occur at the same time.

In summary, at the beginning level, explicit learning seems more important than implicitlearning, and the more advanced students become, the more the implicit learning becomes practical.It is also important to consider what Schmitt (2000) declares, “ for second language learners, atleast, both explicit and incidental learning are necessary, and should be seen as complementary”.

In fact, many students at Hanoi Community College tend to acquire vocabulary through explicitlearning rather than implicit learning They have not reached the language level high enough toguess words from contexts; they want to get explanations and meanings directly from teachers.Instead of trying to understand new words in English with both meanings and sense, they alwaysattempt to translate the whole phrases and terms into Vietnamese and feel satisfied when theysucceed in doing this They spend little time on self-study That means they neither read more, writemore, nor translate or communicate in English outside the classroom In short, they do not practiceusing English as much as they should This results in their inability to guess words or involve in theimplicit learning process.

To acquire vocabulary through implicit learning, students have to improve their own knowledgeand studying methods Teachers’ instruction can help to influence the explicit learning process so asto provide them with precise word meanings and usage, to make them practice using the words, to

make them aware of the advantages of learning strategies and to motivate them to spend more timeand energy on vocabulary so that they will somehow develop implicit learning.

1.3 Some factors affecting vocabulary acquisition1.3.1 Intralexical factors:

According to Schmitt and McCarthy (1997:142-153) intralexical factors that affect the learning

of words include:-Pronounce ability

Foreign learners experience phonological difficulties related to phonemes, combinations ofphonemes and suprasegmental features (Schmitt and McCarthy, 1997: 142) What makes somewords phonologically more difficult than others is very much determined by the learner’s L1 system.The L1 system may be responsible for the learner’s inability to discriminate between somephonemes and subsequent confusion of words differing precisely in these problematic phonemes.For example, learners of accounting terms may have difficulty with distinguishing words like

durable, divisible, portable, and recognizable Some may find it difficult to pronounce finalconsonant clusters in pieces and traders.

Familiarity with phonological features and a word’s phonotactic regularity (its familiarcombinations of features) were shown to affect accuracy in perceiving, saying and remembering theword Some studies have shown that foreign words which were difficult to pronounce were not

learned as well as the more pronounceable ones For example, accounting terms: collateral security,liability, indebtedness, mortgage, and encumbrance.

Correct pronunciation of a word requires stress on the right syllable Learners of English may havedifficulty because the place of the stress is variable and has to be learned as part of the word’sspoken form Moreover, the weakening of unstressed vowels introduces yet another factor ofdifficulty, particularly for Vietnamese learners who are unfamiliar with this phenomenon in their L1.

If word knowledge requires correct pronunciation and correct spelling, then the degree of script correspondence in a word is a facilitating – or difficulty – inducing factor A Vietnamese wordencountered in reading presents no pronunciation mystery to the learner, provided the learner knowswhich letter combinations represent which sounds and drops the final consonants in speech AnEnglish written word, however, may provide no clues to its pronunciation (e.g different

sound-pronunciation of the letter ‘e’ in accounting terms pledge and retire or the letter ‘o’ in mortgage andopen note or the letter ‘u’ in current assets and security) Words characterized by such sound-script

incongruence are good candidates for pronunciation and spelling errors.-length

Intuitively, it would seem that longer words should be more difficult simply because there ismore to learn and remember Learners of English might memorize more easily one-syllable wordsthan two-syllable words, two-syllable words more easily than three-syllable words, especially forVietnamese learners as the Vietnamese language is a monosyllabic language Some learners mayhave more difficulty in learning longer words than shorter ones and it decreases with the increase inthe learner’s proficiency.

If the length factor could be properly isolated we might find longer words more difficult to learnthan the shorter ones In a learning situation, however, it is hard to attribute the difficulty of learninga particular word to its length rather than to a variety of factors Sometimes it is not the word’slength that affects students’ learnability but the learner’s frequent exposure to it In other words, it isthe quantity of input that may contribute to the successful learning of the short words, not theirintrinsic quality.

-morphology:

+ inflexional complexity

Features such as irregularity of plural, gender of inanimate nouns, and noun cases make an itemmore difficult to learn than an item with no such complexity, since the learning load caused by themultiplicity of forms is greater.

+ derivational complexity

The learner’s ability to decompose a word into its morphemes can facilitate the recognition of a new

word and its subsequent production For example, familiarity with meaning of the suffix –re and theword invest will enable him or her to recognize the meaning of reinvest.

However, the lack of regularity with which morphemes can or cannot combine to create meanings or

the multiplicity of the meanings can be a source of difficulty For example, inflow, outflow (ofcapital funds)

Deceptively transparent words (i.e words that look as if they were combined of meaningful

morphemes) may cause difficulty to learners For example, in incorporate, income, indebtedness, in

does not mean inside The learner’s assumption here was that the meaning of a word equaled the

meanings of its components This assumption is correct in the case of genuinely transparent words,but not when the components are not real morphemes

-similarity of lexical forms

L2 learners confuse words that sound and/ or look alike In learning a new word, the foreignlearner might experience form interference from an already known word, which would make thenew word difficult to retain in its correct form This, in turn, might lead to confusion of similarwords both in recognition and in production.

Similar lexical forms were called ‘synforms’ Synforms might be a difficulty-inducing factor for

learners For example: considerable/considerate/consideration; corporate/corporation/incorporate;profit/profitable/profitability.

It is sometimes argued that certain grammatical categories are more difficult to learn than others.Nouns seem to be the easiest; adverbs, the most difficult; verbs and adjectives are somewhere inbetween The effect of part of speech decreases with the increase in the learners’ proficiency Eventhough learners acquired the semantic content of some words, they confuse their part of speech.Sometimes nouns are replaced by verbs, sometimes adjectives by nouns, or adverbs by adjectives.

-semantic features of the word: abstractness, specificity and register restriction, idiomaticity,multiple meaning may affect word learnability

Abstract words are assumed to be more difficult to learn than concrete words (E.g., concrete words:numbers, colors, book; abstract words: love) Most of accounting terms are abstract words such as

equity, estate, chattel, net worth, credit, loan, inventory, tax, etc

The register restriction of some words is a related problem Foreign learners are very oftenunaware of the fact that lexical items frequent in one field or mode of discourse may not be normalin another General and neutral words, which can be used a variety of contexts and registers are lessproblematic than words restricted to a specific register, or area of use Foreign learners tend to usewords set up as superordinates (general terms) while the majority of the native speakers use co-hyponyms (more specific terms).

Idiomatic expressions are much more difficult to understand and learn to use than their

non-idiomatic meaning equivalents E.g., trade-in-allowance, net-worth, import-export cover rate, account, cheque-to-bearer, cheque-to-order, cheque-with-funds.

joint-Multiple meaning: one form can have several meanings and one meaning can be represented bydifferent forms This is one of the most difficulties for learners to understand ESP texts, especially

those at low level (elementary or pre-intermediate) For example, the word bank means a financialinstitution or bank of a river; the word capital in the capital of Hanoi or the wealth that can be used

to produce more wealth.

1.3.2 Person-dependent factors:

Lightbown and Spada (1999) state that these factors include age, language aptitude, intelligence,attitude and motivation, personality Rubin and Thomson (1994) share the same ideas about thefactors including age, aptitude, attitude, personality, learning style and past experiences

Ellis (1994) explains those factors as individual differences that affect different aspects of secondlanguage learning His report on the effect of age shows that learners who start as children achieve amore native-like accent than those who start as adolescents or adults The younger is better in thecase of phonology but not in the acquisition of grammar There is no clear evidence that age hasgreat impact on vocabulary acquisition.

Caroll (1965) identified four factors in language aptitude: phonemic coding ability, rote learningability, inductive language learning ability and grammatical sensitivity; of which the first three arehypothesized to be involved in vocabulary learning

Ellis (1994: 507-522) analyses a number of learning styles used by adult ESL learners such asconcrete learning style, analytical learning style, communicative learning style and authority-orientated learning style (based on Willing, 1987), etc He eventually concludes that “Learnersmanifest different learning styles but it is not yet clear whether some styles result in faster and morelearning than others.”

Motivation: Motivation plays a significant role in the process of learning a second language andthus in vocabulary acquisition as well SLA research also views motivation as a key factor in L2learning According to Ellis (1994: 508-525), motivation is viewed as integrative motivation,instrumental motivation; resultative motivation and intrinsic interest Intergrative motivation

involves an interest in learning an L2 because of a sincere and personal interest in the people andculture represented by the other language group It contrasts with an instrumental motivation, whichconcerns the practical value and advantages of learning a new language Learners with eitherintegrative or instrumental motivation, or a mixture of both, will manifest greater effort andperseverance in learning Resultative motivation is explained by Ellis as an interactive effectbetween motivation and achievement A high level of motivation stimulates learning and success inL2 learning can help to maintain existing motivation Conversely, low motivation leads to lowachievement, then lower motivation can develop Other internal sources of motivation, such as self-confidence, may be more important than either type of motivation in some contexts Motivation canalso take the form of intrinsic interest in specific learning activities and may be more easilyinfluenced by teachers than goal-directed motivation Ellis (1994:523)

Personality: Second language acquisition may be more difficult for some people due to a certainfactor - personality Personality can affect SLA in general and vocabulary acquisition in particular.Studies have shown that extraverts (or unreserved and outgoing people) acquire a second languagebetter than introverts (or shy people) Extroverted learners will be willing to try to communicateeven if they are not sure they will succeed, while students that are afraid of embarrassing themselvesby speaking incorrectly or by not being able to speak may try to avoid opportunities that wouldotherwise aid their learning Those who avoid interaction are typically quiet, reserved people, (orintroverts) Logically, fear will cause students not to try and advance their skills, especially whenthey feel they are under pressure Just the lack of practice will make introverts less likely to fullyacquire the second language vocabulary.

These person-dependent factors produce variation in the rate of learning and the ultimate level ofL2 attainment They differ from person to person and determine to some extent how a learnerapproaches a task.

1.3.3 Learning task: materials, goal

The traditional, broader understanding of task as in Flavell (1979), Wenden (1987), and Williamsand Burden (1997) stated that the learning task includes the materials being learned (such as thegenre of a piece of reading) as well as the goal the learner is trying to achieve by using thesematerials (such as remembering, comprehending, or using language)

As Crookes (1986) defined, task is a piece of work or an activity, usually with a specifiedobjective, undertaken as part of an educational course, or at work

In practice, it appears to refer to the idea of some kind of activity designed to engage the learnerin using the language communicatively or reflectively in order to arrive at an outcome other than thatof learning a specified feature of the L2 A task can be a real-world activity or a contrived,pedagogic activity (Nunan, 1989), as long as the process of completing the task corresponds to thatfound in discourse based on the exchange of information (Ellis, 1994: 595)

Tasks are specific language-learning activities that may facilitate optimal conditions for secondlanguage learning (Fluente, 2006) Tasks should be structured in reference to desirable goals Thegoal of L2 vocabulary tasks should be acquisition of words and expansion of word’s knowledge, notonly the meanings but also the forms In her research on “the role of pedagogical tasks and form-focused instruction” Fluente has concluded that “task-based lessons seemed to be more effectivethan the Presentation, Practice and Production lesson” The analysis also suggests that a task-basedlesson with an explicit focus-on-forms component was more effective than a task-based lesson thatdid not incorporate this component in promoting acquisition of word morphological aspects Theresults also indicate that the explicit focus on forms component may be more effective when placedat the end of the lesson, when meaning has been acquired.

Different types of task materials, task purposes, and tasks at various difficulty levels havevarious effects on the learners’ vocabulary acquisition For example, learning words in a word list isdifferent from learning the same words in a passage As well, remembering a word meaning isdifferent from learning to use the same word in real life situations

1.3.4 Learning context:

The learning context refers to the socio-cultural-political environment where learning takesplace The learning context can include the teachers, the peers, the classroom climate or theclassroom interaction in general With regard to classroom interaction and second languageacquisition, Ellis (1994: 606) concluded that “Opportunities to negotiate meaning may help theacquisition of L2 vocabulary; Teacher-controlled pedagogic discourse may contribute to theacquisition of formal language skills, while learner-controlled natural discourse may help thedevelopment of oral language skills; Learners need access to well-formed input that is tailored to

their own level of understanding This can be achieved in teacher-directed lessons with a defined structure and by well-adjusted teacher talk;” All of these give support to the hypothesis:successful L2 learning may be possible in a favorable classroom environment.

clearly-The learning context can include the curriculum and the availability of input and outputopportunities All of such factors may constrain the ways learners approach learning tasks andacquire vocabulary knowledge.

1.3.5 Learning strategies:

Learning strategy is one important factor A learning strategy is a series of actions a learner takesto complete a learning task A strategy starts when the learner analyzes the task, the situation, andwhat is available in his/her own repertoire The learner then goes on to select, deploy, monitor, andevaluate the effectiveness of this action, and decides if s/he needs to revise the plan and action

Besides the above factors, the mother tongue can influence the way second-language vocabularyis learnt, the way it is recalled for use, and the way learners compensate for lack of knowledge byattempting to construct complex lexical items The more aware learners are of the similarities anddifferences between their mother tongue and the target language, the easier they will find it to adopteffective learning and production strategies Schmitt and McCarthy (1997:179)

To sum up, psychologists, linguists, and language teachers have been interested in secondlanguage vocabulary learning for a long time (Levenston, 1979) In fact, the vocabulary field hasbeen especially productive in the last two decades This chapter aims to provide a brief look onvocabulary acquisition and factors affecting vocabulary learning according to prestigious linguistsand researchers This will serve as a base for the study to get its aim: finding out some factorsaffecting ESP vocabulary learning at Hanoi Community College

Chapter 2: The investigation

2.1 Current situation of the teaching and learning of ESP at Hanoi Community College

Hanoi Community College (HCC) has been established since 2005, based on Hanoi TechnicalHigh School of Civil Engineering (founded in 1987 after the incorporation of 4 Hanoi Builders’Training Schools founded in 1973) Hanoi Community College has a long standing tradition intraining technicians and workers in the field of economics, technology, construction andarchitecture

Therefore, at HCC, ESP covers courses in several areas such as English for Construction andArchitecture, English for Building Materials Technology, English for Finance and Accounting,English for Computer Science and English for Electricity.

This is a technical college, so foreign language is not considered the main subject It serves as ameans that help students to read documents and machine manuals in English, but not tocommunicate with English native speakers.

2.1.1 Why English for Finance and Accounting?

As mentioned before, this study investigates a group of students who are being trained to beaccountants in the future The accounting career is now in high demand The number of studentscoming into the college to study Finance and Accounting is increasing quickly in recent years Theyaccount for approximately 60% of the total number of students at the college.

The learning program was designed by the teachers of English ten years ago This is one of thetwo ESP syllabuses firstly applied at the college The organizers of the course aimed at providingstudents a means to get access to the available English materials in the field The syllabus focuses onthe subject matters of Finance and Accounting through reading comprehension texts

Since vocabulary learning is believed to have “a synergistic association” with reading (Coadyand Huckin, 1997:2), the investigation of this study was carried out to find out factors that affectvocabulary learning and thus give suggestions to improve students’ vocabulary learning and the ESPcourse as well.

2.1.2 The learners

The learners of English at HCC are approximately from 19 to 24 in age They come fromdifferent provinces of the country and bring with them different levels of English background.Almost of every student started English at the high school; although some of them learnt Russian,French and the others have never learnt a foreign language Thus, the first thing the English teachershave to do is to improve the students’ level of General English before they can deal with subjectmatters in this language.

Another problem of the students, especially the students at Vocational Training level, is thatmost of them do not have the habit of learning independently and tend to depend on the textbooksand the teachers for knowledge This fact calls for a teacher’s provision of the methods of learningfor students

From the survey and talks to teachers and learners, most of the learners said that they cannotexpress their ideas in speaking and writing lessons and it is difficult for them to get the gist ofinformation from the conversation or texts in listening and reading lessons They said that thereason for these difficulties is that they lack a great deal of vocabulary So, there is a need to findways to help the learners enlarge their vocabulary in general and ESP vocabulary in particular.

2.1.3 The syllabus and materials

At HCC, English is taught in a formal setting, namely a classroom The teaching of English isdivided into two stages During the first stage (consisting of two terms), the students study GeneralEnglish in a duration of 150 class hours for College students and 120 class hours for Vocationalstudents In the second stage, they are provided with an ESP course in their own specialization afterhaving fulfilled the GE course.

In the General English course, Lifelines Elementary is used as the course book for vocational

students and Lifelines Pre-intermediate for college students In the ESP course, the English teaching

materials used for them is the book “English for Finance and Accounting” It was designed by the

teachers of English at the college with 30 class hours each (Vocational Training level) and 60 classhours each (College level) As mentioned in Part A (page 3), this study is limited to the ESP forvocational students, the syllabus and materials used for vocational students are discussed below

The ESP syllabus focuses on the subject matters of a specific area The main focus of the presentEnglish for Finance and Accounting syllabus at HCC is reading comprehension and translation(mainly English-Vietnamese translation) The texts and the exercises were designed in the form of acontent-based syllabus rather than a task-based one It includes seven topics which are dealt with in30 class hours, 3 class hours per week The exercises after each text are often reading comprehensionand grammar exercises Five texts out of the total nine have got one vocabulary exercise each All ofthe vocabulary exercises are blank-filling, one word for each blank in separate sentences There is alist of new words and their meanings in Vietnamese at the end of each unit The teaching syllabus isdesigned in the form of a form-focused instruction Less attention is paid to vocabulary in thespecific area

2.1.4 The teachers and their methods of teaching

Six English teachers have been working at our English Division, aged from 30 to 45 All ofthem have graduated from a formal ELT training course from different tertiary institutions inVietnam The oldest teacher has more than 25 years of teaching experience and the youngest one hasgot 3 years Nevertheless, none of us has had any chances to participate in refreshment coursesabroad Five of us have the responsibility to teach both GE and ESP None of us, however, has beentrained in teaching ESP So we are facing with many difficulties in teaching process, of which thelack of the specific knowledge and the choice of appropriate teaching materials and methodologiesseem to be the major concerns.

For most of the ESP teachers at HCC, the common method of teaching in ESP reading lessons isthe traditional teacher-centered, especially to Vocational students In classes, explanation,translation, asking and answering questions are the main class activities The teachers are oftenasked to explain every new word, new structure and even to translate the text into Vietnamese Ourstudents are usually passive in the learning process

The major interaction patterns in the classroom are:- Teacher-whole class (most of the time)

- Teacher-student interaction (sometimes)

- Students initiating interaction: pair work, group work, questions and comments (occasionally).Through class observation and small talks to ESP teachers and learners, it is obvious that most ofthe teachers teaching ESP at HCC are deeply influenced by grammar-translation method Therefore,

their lessons focus on grammatical structures and translation, and they do not pay much attention tovocabulary teaching There are no language activities for vocabulary learning This may be one ofthe reasons why the learners find it hard to acquire the vocabulary in the specific field.

2.2 Research methodology2.2.1 Research questions

The study aims at finding out the most influential factors according to the learners and what isthe learners’ need in terms of the materials and the methodology

1 What are the factors affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning at Hanoi Community College? 2 What are the suggestions to help the learners learn ESP vocabulary better?

2.2.2 The participants

The participants of this study were 100 vocational students of the Department of Accountingwho were in the first term of their second year at HCC, and had finished both GE and ESP courses.The reason for choosing the second-year students for this study is that at this college only thesecond-year students can learn ESP after they finish a GE course in the first year.

The research is based on the approach of Fraenkel and Wallen (1996) for randomly selectingthree classes for investigation, instead of randomly selecting the individuals, as it is more appropriateand convenient for observation of the participants who filled the questionnaires in classes.

They come from all parts of the country 81% of these students come from the countryside, only19% are from towns and cities Most of them are female (79%) Their age varied from 19 to 24 sothey belong to the same psychological age group However, their English learning background wasdifferent

92% have learnt English before entering HCC 20% of which have learnt English for more than 5years, 65% have learnt English for 2-4 years and only 7% have learnt English under 2 years Among8 students who have not learnt English before, 4 have not learnt any foreign languages Althoughthey were required to finish GE only at Elementary level, a lot of the students may find it easy whilethese 8 students have to struggle with it in only 120 class-hours in their first year So, it can be saidthat the proficiency level of the students before the ESP course is mainly elementary

All of the student informants had learnt 135 class-hours out of the total 285 class-hours of theaccountancy subject in theories, which is their specialization for studying at HCC In the third term

at HCC, they learn the rest 150 class-hours in theories, and in the forth term they will have 240class-hours more to practice with the accountancy subject.

There were also informal interviews with five English teachers and 5 teachers teaching theaccountancy subject at HCC

2.2.3 Data collection instrument:

The questionnaires were constructed based on the literature on ESP vocabulary learning, theresearcher’s observation and experience got during her 10 years of teaching at HCC, and thediscussion with the other five English teachers at the college.

The questionnaire was written in Vietnamese to make sure that the participants could fullyunderstand the questions before giving their answers The question items were multiple choice,rating-scale, agree/disagree and both close-ended and open-ended.

The questionnaire consists of three main parts:

- Part one: collect information about the students’ background – place of domicile, number ofyears they have been learning English, their proficiency levels in English.

- Part two: collect information about the factors affecting ESP vocabulary learning This partincludes three subparts: Part A - students’ attitudes towards ESP vocabulary learning (finding about

person-dependent factors); Part B – the reading material, their difficulties and the causes

(investigating intralexical factors, learning context); Part C – the teachers and teaching method(finding information on input/output opportunities, etc.).

- Part three: their expectations of ESP material and teachers’ methodology.The sample of the questionnaire is presented in the appendix.

2.2.4 Data collection procedure:

To obtain the data for the investigation, the questionnaires were delivered to 100 students duringthe class time The students were given clear instruction before each question so that they couldrespond appropriately to each question.

After the questionnaire was administered, the respondents were encouraged to read it thoroughlyand answer frankly and truly Then they will be instructed to take as much time as they need tocomplete the questionnaire.

2.2.5 Data analysis

Data from the questionnaire was classified into different categories such as students’ attitudesand motivation to ESP vocabulary learning; their difficulties in intralexical area, the readingmaterials (goal, learning task), the teachers (the availability of input or formal instruction), learners’background knowledge about the topic and their expectations of ESP material and teachers’methodology

Then the data was analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, percentage)and interpretations The information was then displayed in forms of tables and figures.

2.3 Findings and discussion

2.3.1 Factors affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning at Hanoi Community College

Factors affecting ESP vocabulary learning were categorized in terms of the participants, thereading materials and the teachers Twenty questions and statements were designed to make it clear.

2.3.1.1 The participants’ background

The participants involved in this research are 100 vocational students of Finance and AccountingDepartment, who had fulfilled both of their general English course and the course of English forfinance and accounting

Figure 1 Students’ background

Duration of learningEnglish beforeentering this college