MINISTRY OF JUSTICE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI LAW UNIVERSITY TRAN THIEN NGAN 443016 DEMOTIVATING FACTORS AFFECTING LEGAL ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENT ACQUISITION OF LEGAL ENGLISH AT HANOI LAW UNIVERSITY Hanoi — 2023 MINISTRY OF JUSTICE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI LAW UNIVERSITY TRAN THIEN NGAN 443016 DEMOTIVATING FACTORS AFFECTING LEGAL ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENT ACQUISITION OF LEGAL ENGLISH AT HANOI LAW UNIVERSITY Major: Legal English GRADUATION THESIS Supervisor Vu Van Tuan, Ph. Hanoi — 2023 il STUDENT DECLARATION I hereby state that I: Tran Thien Ngan — ID 443016, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Bachelor's Graduation Paper deposited in the library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes ofstudy and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper. April 21", 2023 Supervisor’s confirmation Researcher’s signature Vu Van Tuan, Ph.
Tran Thien Ngan 1H ACKNOWLEDGMENT A thesis is never successfully completed in isolation. I received help, encouragement, critique, consolation and from many people who deserve acknowledgement. The researcher is greatly indebted to the invaluable assistance and support of the following generous and talented people who have made an otherwise abstract, complex and random thoughts come into shape that this work is right now, wishes to express her sincere gratitude to all those who helped her in the completion of this humble research work which she hopes to give as her contribution to the efforts of teachers to provide excellence in the completion of her research. They are legion but because of limited space only few are named here while the most are treasured more in her memory and her heart.
She would like to heartily express her deepest appreciation and gratitude to her Supervisor, Dr. Vu Van Tuan, for his incomparable wisdom, willing and unparallel expertise giving the author the needed guidance in the completion of the study; She would love to thank all of the lecturers from the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Hanoi Law University who have provided her with invaluable sources of knowledge and instructions during her study at this Institute; She also wishes to thank the members of the thesis defence committees who were generous with their expertise and precious time. Their pieces of advice, insightful criticisms, and patient encouragement aided the writing of this dissertation in innumerable ways; She offers her sincerest thanks to student participants who have enthusiastically participated in the study. Their participation is greatly important to the completion of the research; Last but never least, she must express her sincere gratitude to her family and friends whose support has been a great significance to the success of her thesis; IV And to all those who in one way or another made this work reach its fruition, the researcher is especially blessed to have had them all.
ABSTRACT Different countries promulgate and implement different kinds of legacy system to govern all activities, so there is a growing need for graduates who can master at least legal English to address this issue. Most educational systems have equipped students with knowledge of laws, especially in countries using English as a foreign language where there is a combination of English and legal knowledge. This study examined four demotivating factors heavily influencing the progress of learners who acquire legal English. There are 222 representative legal English major students, who are in the courses of K44, K45, and K46 at Hanoi Law University in a mixed-methods approach.
The results reveal that the respondents remark that infrastructure-related factors and university/faculty-related factors are regarded as demotivating factors. For teacher-related factors and student-related factors are not considered as problematic to them. It is advisable for school administrators to adjust their policies to upgrade the infrastructures to serve better teaching qualities by reserving specialized spaces for legal English major students to improve their legal English competency in mooting situations there. Besides, they claim that there should be more chances to exchange their legal English abilities with other institutions and current legal practical venues to keep them updated.
The findings of this study would benefit for school administrators, teachers of legal English, students and anyone who is concerned about the capability of using legal English at work. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Declaration by author lil Acknowledgements IV Abstract VI Table of contents Vil List of tables 1x List of abbreviations PART 1. Rationale for study 2. Aims and Objectives of the Study 2.
Aims of the study 2. Objectives of the study 3. Scope of the Study 5. Significance of the Study 6.
Structure of the Study PART IT. English for Specific Purposes L2. Demotivation ằm—=¬CONoW 1. Demotivating factors 1,5, Previous studies 1.
METHODOLOGY aL Research design Poe Research Question Restated 2. Procedures of data collection 19 2G, Data analysis 19 2. RESULTS AND DICUSSION 21 ENP Demographic information of the respondents 21 3. The analysis of teacher-related factors affecting major legal 22 English students %3, The analysis of student-related factors affecting major legal 26 English students 3.
The analysis of infrastructure-related factors affecting major legal 30 English students Jp. The analysis of university/faculty-related factors affecting major 3® legal English students 3. The summative analysis of students’ semi-structured interviews 35 about the demotivating factors affecting legal English major students 3. The contrastive analysis about the demotivating factors affecting 37 legal English major students in terms of courses 3.
Summary Sĩ PART III. Summary of the main findings 38 4. Limitations and suggestions for further research ay 4. Suggestions 40 REFERENCES 41 APPENDIX Appendix A.
QUESTIONNAIRE vill LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1. Profiles of the respondents involving in the study 21 Table 2. Teacher-relatedfactors 24 Table 3. Student-relatedfactors 28 Table 4.
[nfrastructure-relatedfactors 31 Table 5. University/faculty-relatedfactors 33 Table 6. Summarized analysis of students’ semi-structured interviews 36 (manipulated by NVivo) Table 7. Tests of Between-Subjects Effects in terms of courses 37 LIST OF ABREVIATIONS HLU : Hanoi Law University ESP : English for Specific Purposes GE : General English EAP : English for Academic Purposes ELT : English language teaching L2 : Second language EOP : English for occupational purposes EVP : English for vocational purposes EMP : English for medical purposes EBP : English for business purposes ELP : English for legal purposes ESCP : English for sociocultural purposes VPSC : Vietnam People’s Supreme Court MOET : Ministry of Education and Training MOJ : Ministry of Justice JA : Judicial Academy HPU : Hanoi Procuratorate University HNUFL : Hanoi National University Faculty of Law HCMCLU : HCMC Law University HUSL : Hue University School of Law CUFL : Can Tho University Faculty of Law VUFL : Vinh University Faculty of Law TUUFL : Trade Union University Faculty of Law SUFL : Saigon University Faculty of Law DUFL : Da Lat University Faculty of Law XI PART I.INTRODUCTION This part provides the context of the research by explaining the rationale, aims of the study, research questions, significance and scope of the study, along with the structure of the paper.
Rationale for study Teaching and learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP) rather than general English (GE) or English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has become a focal concern in the field of English language teaching (ELT). In its essence, English has shown continued impacts on the global integration in that it has become the means of international communication, or commonly so-called lingua franca. ESP language learning and teaching, to a certain extent, stems from the enormous changes and massive economic development thanks to the far-reaching consequences of globalization, which highlights the growth of multinational capitalism of some global superpowers such as Britain or the US. These countries have an age-old accumulation of immigration from different countries; therefore, they need to employ one common language to exchange information in their daily lives and at work.
In addition, ideologies of progress and the desire to facilitate international communication, giving opportunities for knowledge expansion have formulated the influential motivation in ESP’s establishment. As such, ESP learners are not acquiring the language for general educative purposes or for the understanding of literature in which the language is the subject matter of the course, but rather a means to the acquisition of some quite different body of knowledge or set of skills which inquire the modification of the practical knowledge of relevant fields (Vakilifard et al. In other words, context and content play crucial roles in ESP pedagogy because context refers to what situation learners would be using language skills and content implies what he or she needs to achieve through one language (e. In practice, many ELT educators (e., Dja’ far et al, 2016; Lebedev & Tsybina, 2018; Martinovié & Poljakovié, 2010) have perceived ESP as a radical break with a major, worldwide educational tide of change.
As noted in the study of Negova and | Umarova (2022), the finding asserts that ESP is widely recognized as sustained growth and has made a substantial contribution to the field of English language learning and teaching. With the aim to meet the communication needs of rapidly industrialising nations, overcome local barriers to communication, often by promoting ‘global’ languages such as English at the expense of local languages, and contribute to the growth of multinational corporations, ESP is thought to be functioned as more efficient, being targeted to the specific needs of the learners for their workplaces or academic settings (e., Starfield, 2016; Tahririan & Chalak, 2019; Wahyunengsih, 2018). Obviously, one of the most remarkable factors highly influencing language USinskiené (2014) state that motivation enables ESP students to be more achievable and competent in their learning outcomes. Motivation could be regarded as a driving force, determining human’s behaviour; thus, research on second language (L2) in general and ESP motivation in particular is to highlight the need analysis of learners’ desire to keep his or her determination on acquiring the target language.
However, motivation to learn ESP is obstructive due to its nature such as peculiar writing conventions and exclusive glossary, which is so- called demotivating factors in ESP language learning and teaching studies, and are often ignored in the research field. In its essence, demotivation is possibly interpreted as the negligence of adequate motivation to perform a specific goal. Vakilifard et al. (2020) opine that demotivation refers to the state in which a lack of motivation results from specific external causes.
As a result, demotivating factors hinder learners’ learning motivation and result in unsuccessful competence of ESP proficiency. Consequently, understanding demotivating factors in ESP teaching and learning helps both teachers and learners be aware of the risks that weaken student motivation. Actually, there is a number of demotivating factors in ESP learning and teaching, including student-related factors, teacher-related factors, infrastructure-related factors, and university/faculty-related factors. These factors explain the reasons why students commonly regard de-motivation as a teacher-owned problem due to partially inappropriate teachers’ behaviors.
2 Consequently, demotivation probably leads to a negative impact on students’ ESP learning outcomes. In a similar vein, Dérnyei and Ushioda (2021) assert that demotivation can have a negative impact on the learners’ attitudes and behaviours, ESP learning outcomes, and teachers’ motivation. In other words, ESP teaching and learning under the demotivated condition brings about low achievement of expected learning outcomes. As such, successful ESP language learning requires serious avoidance of demotivating factors.
Although there are some studies (e., Navickiené et al., 2015; Nikolaeva & Synekop, 2020; Vũ, 2012) investigating student demotivation in ELT, no study has examined ESP demotivating factors influencing learners’ expected learning outcomes in a single study. Doérnyei and Ushioda (2021) regard demotivation as “another side of motivation” (p. 138), so one way to increase the quality of ESP language learning and teaching in foreign countries is getting familiar with demotivating factors among the students acquiring ESP subjects.